Original scientific paper

The impact of different levels of blood alcohol concentration on psychomotor tasks

Dragutin Ivanec orcid.org/0000-0002-3051-3208 ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Ana Švagelj
Veseljka Rebić ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of different alcohol concentration levels in blood on two basic psychomotor tasks. Participants (N = 23), were tested at four levels of alcohol concentration: placebo; 0.3; 0.5 and 0.8 g/kg. In every measurement participants were performing four different tasks: go/no-go reaction time task and three tracking tasks of different complexity levels. The results showed that different levels of alcohol concentration have a statistically significant effect on reaction time on the go/no-go task and on two tracking tasks. As the concentration of alcohol increased, reaction time decreased and performance on tracking tasks was more impaired. There was no alcohol effect on the simplest tracking task. Obtained results suggest that the effect of low blood alcohol concentration is stronger as the complexity of task increases. The size effects were also high, but in terms of differences in absolute measurement units, the effects were relatively small.

Keywords

alcohol; psychomotor skills; go/no-go task; tracking

Hrčak ID:

82659

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/82659

Publication date:

15.6.2009.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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