Abstract
University students were given timing tasks after a 30-min ingestion period of alcohol (0.4 g/kg). Intertone intervals to be matched were presented either to both ears or to the left ear only. Compared with controls, subjects receiving alcohol were found to show reduced timing variability (time estimate variance and Fourier transforms of the estimates) when tones were presented to both ears, but not to the left ear only. Control subjects displayed a smaller variability of timing responses for tones presented to the left ear than for tones presented to both ears, but these differences were either reversed or eliminated by alcohol. The results are discussed in terms of a variability hypothesis of alcohol effects.
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Parts of the paper were presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Seattle, WA, November 1987. We are indebted to Roger Drake for calling our attention to the behavioral variability differences associated with hemispheric activation.
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Crow, L.T., Quevedo-Converse, Y.G. & Moorhead, E.M. Alcohol effects on variability of timing responses to single-ear or dual-ear stimulation. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 26, 359–360 (1988). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337682
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337682