Blackouts: the etiology of alcohol-induced amnestic episodes and their effect on alcohol-related beliefs
Year: 2003
Type: dissertation
Abstract: intake.Robe (1987) argued that blackouts reflect selective memory or denial used to avoid guilt for intoxicated behavior, but Goodwin (1970) documented events varying from sexual experiences, accidents, and travel over long distances to more frequent and mundane events (e.g engaging in outwardly normal conversation) that presumably held little incentive for one to deny or forget.Though instances may occur in which drinkers cope with regret over intoxicated behavior through selective denial of events, this seems an unlikely explanation for all blackout episodes.A limitation of the cited reports is the uniform regard for blackout phenomena, which neglects the existing variation in duration and magnitude of alcohol-induced memory loss.Johnson and Jennison (1994) described two distinct types: en bloc and fragmentary blackouts.En bloc blackouts have definitive starting points, contain amnesia for all events within a discrete period, and end with a sense of lost time.Further, it has been suggested that a high blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is a necessary precursor (Goodwin, 1970).After a fragmentary blackout, one is able to recall portions of the amnestic episode but only when cued about them.Beyond the potential for memory recovery through cueing, memory for prior intoxicated events may return during subsequent episodes of intoxication.Research suggests that recall of material is improved if retrieval takes place in a state similar to that of the original encoding (Eich, 1989;Weissenborn & Duka, 2000).In contrast to en bloc blackouts, it remains unclear whether fragmentary blackouts occur at or above a particular BAC.A few published reports note disparities between en bloc and fragmentary blackouts (Goodwin, 1969(Goodwin, , 1970;;Johnson & Jennison, 1994).Whereas an etiology for the former has been proposed (Goodwin, 1977;Sweeney, 1990), to date there are no published studies of fragmentary blackouts.Anecdotal and clinical descriptions suggest that fragmentary blackouts may occur more widely and frequently than en bloc blackouts, and they reflect a more interesting and complex neuropsychological phenomenon as their transient quality implicates a number of memorial processes.
Author: Bryan Hartzler
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1882804544