FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine
Civil Aerospace Medical Institute
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Report No: DOT/FAA/AM-94/24

Title and Subtitle: Low Dose Alcohol Effects on Human Behavior and Performance: A Review of Post 1984 Research, N95-14863

Report Date: November 1994

Authors: Holloway, F.A.

Abstract: The purpose of this review was to survey the literature examining alcohol effects on human behavior and performance, especially low alcohol dose effects. Other comprehensive reviews on this topic from 1975 to 1990 found that alcohol could affect all classes of performance, but that the kinds of performance most sensitive to low dose effects depended on: (a) the analysis of skills or abilities (selective attention), (b) the kind of task (divided attention tasks), (c) task characteristics (multiple tasks with high demand and/or complexity), and (d) categories of alcohol effects (negative subjective effects and controlled performance).

This review examined 155 empirical studies dating from 1985 to mid-1993, using the alcohol effect schema of Kruger, and reached several general conclusions that were largely in agreement with previous reviews on this topic. First, sensitivity to the subjective intoxicating effects of alcohol was greater than that for all other performance classes and appeared to display a "threshold" with respect to blood alcohol concentration (BAC), rather than the linear relation evident in performance data. Second, sensitivity to performance impairment in "controlled" performance and simulator tasks was greater than that for psychophysical functions or "automatic" performance. Finally, a variety of task-, subject-, and environmental- characteristics or conditions were found to mediate the magnitude and sensitivity to alcohol effects, particularly at lower doses.

This review concluded that, since alcohol sensitivity can vary from time to time, person to person and situation to situation, the setting of a "safe" BAC will always be arbitrary, being based on a low. but non-zero. incidence of effects below that level.

Key Words: Alcohol, Human performance, Low dose, Low BAC, Reviews, Subjective effects, Performance tasks

No. of Pages: 48