Binge Drinking At Early Ages Impairs Decision-Making Skills

[muskanislam44]

College students who drink heavily but are not necessarily alcoholics have poor decision-making skills, according to a study by psychologists at the University of Missouri. Only those students who start drinking when they were younger showed poor skills.

This was a four-year study of 200 Michigan University students. Dr. Anna Goudriaan, Dr. Kenneth Sher and their colleagues classified the participants into four categories: low binge drinkers, moderate binge drinkers, increasing binge drinkers and high binge drinkers. A drinking binge is defined as having five drinks in one sitting.

Participants took tests of decision-making strategies that phone number data a person's ability to make advantageous choices.

Those students who were in the high alcohol use category made riskier and less advantageous choices. Only those with the longest histories of drinking scored poorly.

"There is reason to think that heavy binge drinking during adolescence, when the brain is rapidly developing, may have some negative legacy on psychological development," Dr. Sher wrote in a summary of the study which appears in the June issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

This residential style offers a great amount of emotional and psychological support for the student as he or she works through emotional or behavioral issues. It also provides a more solid relational foundation since one or more of the school's staff members live in the same home. And, it facilitates more social interaction among the students who live together.