Early life predictors of alcohol-related attitudes among 11-year-old never drinkers

The potential adverse effects of minors' exposure to alcohol-related stimuli via licenced venues: A narrative review

ISSUES

Young people are particularly impressionable when it comes to forming expectations and attitudes around alcohol consumption. Any stimuli that normalise and foster positive expectations around alcohol use may increase the risk of underage alcohol consumption. Alcohol venues that market themselves as being appropriate 'family friendly' establishments for children risk exposing minors to environments that are saturated with alcohol-related stimuli. However, research examining how exposure to licenced venues affects underage people is very limited. The aim of this narrative review was to identify and synthesise relevant evidence to better understand how attending these venues might affect minors.

APPROACH

A narrative review of research published between January 2016 and November 2022 was conducted to investigate the potential effects on underage people of exposure to licenced venues and stimuli encountered in/around these venues. Examined stimuli included alcohol advertising, people consuming alcohol and alcohol outlets.

KEY FINDINGS

The reviewed literature indicates that the risk of alcohol-related harm among minors is likely to increase with greater exposure to alcohol venues due to the associated exposure to alcohol advertising, exposure to others consuming alcohol and higher outlet density. In combination, these factors are likely to normalise alcohol consumption for minors and create positive alcohol expectancies.

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION

Venues serving alcohol should be discouraged from targeting families and parents should be warned about the risks associated with taking minors to venues where alcohol is sold and consumed.

Social epidemiology of early adolescent alcohol expectancies

PURPOSE

To determine the sociodemographic correlates of alcohol expectancies (i.e., beliefs regarding positive or negative effects of alcohol) in a national (U.S.) cohort of early adolescents 10-14 years old. A second aim was to determine associations between alcohol sipping and alcohol expectancies.

METHODS

We analyzed cross-sectional data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 11,868; Year 2). Linear regression analyses were conducted to estimate associations between sociodemographic factors (sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, household income, parental education, parent marital status, religiosity) and positive (e.g., stress reduction) and negative (e.g., loss of motor coordination) alcohol expectancies. Additional linear regression analyses determined associations between alcohol sipping and alcohol expectancies, adjusting for sociodemographic factors.

RESULTS

Overall, 48.8% of the participants were female and 47.6% racial/ethnic minorities, with a mean age of 12.02 (SD 0.67) years. Older age among the early adolescent sample, male sex, and sexual minority identification were associated with more positive and negative alcohol expectancies. Black and Latino/Hispanic adolescents reported less positive and negative alcohol expectancies compared to White non-Latino/Hispanic adolescents. Having parents with a college education or greater and a household income of $200,000 and greater were associated with higher positive and negative alcohol expectancies. Alcohol sipping was associated with higher positive alcohol expectancies.

CONCLUSIONS

Older age, White non-Latino/Hispanic race, male sex, sexual minority status, higher parental education, and higher household income were associated with higher positive and negative alcohol expectancies. Future research should examine the mechanisms linking these specific sociodemographic factors to alcohol expectancies to inform future prevention and intervention efforts.

Social influences on alcohol outcome expectancy development from childhood to young adulthood: A narrative review

Purpose of Review

Alcohol outcome expectancies emerge in early childhood, develop throughout adolescence, and predict alcohol outcomes well into adulthood. Social factors shape how expectancies are learned in myriad ways, yet such social learning influences seldom are examined in the context of developmental factors. This review summarized literature on the social origins of alcohol expectancies through vicarious (observational) and experiential (direct) alcohol-related learning from childhood to young adulthood within a social learning framework.

Recent Findings

Young children primarily endorse negative expectancies, which decline rapidly with age amidst escalations in positive expectancies across adolescence. Parents and peers can contribute to vicarious learning about alcohol and facilitate experiential learning in different ways and to varying degrees across development. Media and social media, which children are increasingly exposed to as they mature, often depict alcohol-outcome relations that may further contribute to expectancy development in later adolescence and young adulthood.

Summary

Social influences on alcohol expectancy learning are complex and change over time, although this dynamic complexity typically is not depicted in extant literature. Developmentally-informed research capturing co-occurring shifts in social influences and alcohol expectancies is needed.

Parent Alcohol Use and Problems in Children's Alcohol-Related Learning and Subsequent Alcohol Use

Background: Alcohol cognitions can emerge early in life and have lasting associations with alcohol use behavior. Observational learning theories suggest that witnessing alcohol use and its consequences may be an important mechanism underlying early development of alcohol cognitions. Parents are among the earliest contributors to children's alcohol-related learning, although findings regarding the association of parental alcohol use and problems with children's alcohol-related beliefs and attitudes are considerably mixed. This study tested associations of parent alcohol use and problems with adolescent alcohol expectancies, motives, and subsequent alcohol use to help clarify this literature. Methods: Families (N = 227) comprising family alcohol use disorder cases and demographically matched controls were recruited as part of a longitudinal investigation on child development. Parents reported on their alcohol use and problems at seven assessments throughout the index adolescents' childhood, and adolescents reported on their own alcohol expectancies in 6th grade, alcohol motives in 8th grade, and alcohol use in 12th grade. Results: Father alcohol problems and mother alcohol use were linked to more positive and less negative child alcohol expectancies, respectively. However, these cognitions did not contribute unique variance in adolescent alcohol use after accounting for additional risks included in the model. Conclusions: Findings highlight the need for future research aimed at modeling broader and potentially indirect sources of parent influences on adolescent alcohol-related learning and subsequent drinking behavior.

Subjective response to alcohol: Interactive effects of early life stress, parental risk for mood and substance use disorders, and drinking context

Early life stress, specifically childhood maltreatment, and parental risk for mood and substance use disorders (SUDs) are associated with increased risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD). There is limited data on how these factors interact to contribute to alcohol-related outcomes. Prior work has suggested early life stress may increase sensitivity to psychostimulants and that subjective response to alcohol is heritable. It is unclear if early life stress alters sensitivity to alcohol and interacts with parental risk for mood/SUDs, which in turn may act as a risk factor for AUD. The current study uses within-subjects placebo-controlled alcohol administration methods to investigate the effects of childhood maltreatment on subjective response to alcohol in young adults with and without parental risk of mood/SUDs. Additionally, we explored interactions with drinking context (i.e., drinking in a bar vs. non-bar context). Within individuals with parental risk for mood/SUDs, there was a positive relation between total Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) score and how drunk individuals reported feeling across both alcohol and placebo conditions (parental risk group-by-CTQ interaction p = .01; main effect of CTQ within individuals with parental risk for mood/SUDs p = .005). When exploring interactions with drinking context (bar vs. non-bar context), we observed a significant drinking context-by-parental risk-by-CTQ interaction (p = .03), with CTQ score positively associated with greater positive valence/positive arousal feelings in the parental risk group if they consumed their beverages in the bar context (p = .004) but not if they consumed their beverages in the non-bar context. Results suggest childhood maltreatment may contribute to variation in subjective response to the positive effects of alcohol-possibly mediated by alcohol cues and/or expectancies-in young adults with parental risk for mood/SUDs.

Do different drinks make you feel different emotions? Examination of young adolescents' beverage-specific alcohol expectancies using the Alcohol Expectancy Task

The aim of this paper is to explore whether in the eyes of young adolescents the consumption of different alcoholic beverages is associated with different alcohol expectancies, namely beliefs on what emotional outcomes take place when alcohol is consumed. 283 nine to 12-year olds from Switzerland completed the Alcohol Expectancy Task (AET). Participants were asked to assign one of 12 beverages (four alcoholic, eight non-alcoholic) to 16 adults depicting four emotional states (happy, angry, relaxed, sad). General linear modelling was used to examine beverage attributions across the four different emotional states. Beer was the most commonly attributed beverage across all 16 adults depicted. Happy and angry persons were most commonly attributed beer. Gender variations were found for relaxed persons, with females predominantly attributed champagne and males predominantly attributed beer. Young adolescents predominantly gave white wine to sad persons. Findings reveal a level of nuanced knowledge existing among young adolescents with minimal drinking experience, in that they hold very different expectancies for different beverages, prompting for future investigations to examine beverage-specific expectancies. Furthermore, findings showing beverage-specific expectancies among young adolescents may have implications for researchers' considerations of how alcohol-related knowledge and expectancies develop throughout childhood.