Alcohol and elaborative schemas for sentences

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to determine whether alcohol-induced impairments of memory would be reduced by providing subjects with elaborative schemas. Anomalous sentences were presented to sober or intoxicated subjects either alone or with context words to facilitate comprehension. Memory was tested immediately with a yes-no recognition task. The results consistently showed that context words did not increase the number of hits in either sober or intoxicated subjects, and sober subjects made reliably more hits whether or not context words had been provided. The accuracy of recognition of distractors, however, was consistently improved by the presentation of context words, and was much more improved for intoxicated than for sober subjects. The results indicate that alcohol intoxication disrupted the production of elaborative schemas for understanding, but that intoxicated subjects were quite successful at utilizing such schemas as long as the schemas had been provided for them.