One criticism of the SHAS is that it primarily indexes effects of alcohol that may be sedative or anxiolytic and does not adequately measure feelings of “activation.” The Biphasic Alcohol Effects Scale (BAES) was developed to allow the subjective rating of both stimulant and sedative effects (Martin et al. 1993). The use of this scale has been limited, and one study did not find statistically significant differences between alcohol and placebo (Davidson et al. 2002). Another study found that aCOAs and controls had similar levels of stimulation following alcohol, but that aCOAs had a lower baseline level of stimulation than adult non COAs (Erblich et al. 2003). Additionally, alcoholics given a low dose of alcohol were found to report more stimulation than social drinkers in a bar-laboratory setting (Thomas et al. 2004). In a novel study using the BAES, Morzorati and colleagues (Morzorati et al. 2002) examined both an initial response to alcohol and adaptation to this response in FHP and FHN individuals. These authors reported that, when breath alcohol content (BrAC) was clamped (i.e., maintained) at 60 mg% for
