Progress in understanding the relationship between impulsivity and alcohol use has likely been slowed by the imprecise use of the term ‘impulsivity’ and the plethora of measures that have been used to index this construct. Indeed, there is now good evidence, from both human and animal studies, that impulsivity is not a unitary construct. In human studies, different measures that have all been referred to as measures of ‘impulsivity’ are not highly correlated and do not load on a single factor; this is true of both questionnaire-based and laboratory-based measures of impulsivity. It is crucial for researchers to appreciate the distinctions among the different personality bases for rash action, the distinctions among different cognitive tasks thought to relate to rash action, and the distinctions between trait and laboratory task-based operationalizations of impulsivity/inhibition. Researchers should specify the precise cognitive or trait process in which they are interested in order to maximize the validity of the inferences they draw from their studies. Recent years have seen progress in attempting to identify more homogeneous subfacets of impulsivity, with some of these efforts described
