[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 16(2) of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. The correct title of the article should read "Driver training conditions affect sensitivity to the impairing effects of alcohol on a simulated driving test".] Research shows that prior behavioral training in a challenging environment reduces alcohol-induced impairment on simple psychomotor tasks. However, no studies have examined if this relationship generalizes to driving performance. The present study examined simulated driving performance and tested the hypothesis that a challenging training history would protect against the impairing effects of alcohol on driving performance. The challenging training history involved driving in a visually-impoverished environment. Thirty adults were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Two groups were tested under alcohol (0.65 g/kg) after prior experience performing the task under either a visually-impoverished environment or a normal visual environment. The remaining group served as a control and was trained and tested under the visually-impoverished condition environment. Results showed that individuals trained in the impoverished environment displayed sober levels of performance when their performance was subsequently tested under alcohol. By contrast, volunteers trained in a normal environment showed impairment under alcohol. The findings suggest that differences in driving training history can affect a driver's sensitivity to the impairing effects of alcohol. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting