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Research Advances in Alcohol and Drug Problems pp 179–209Cite as

Acute Alcohol Amnesia

What is Remembered and What is Forgotten

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Abstract

Alcohol is a drug with potent effects on human emotions and cognition. Drinking enables individuals to alter their emotional state, their cognitive functioning, and their interactions with their environment. Certain cognitive responses to alcohoF seem to be the idiosyncratic response of a particular individual to a particular dose of alcohol. There are, however, other cognitive responses that have a more orderly relationship to alcohol and reflect a basic effect of the drug. It appears that one such response is the disruption in memory produced by modest doses of alcohol in both alcoholics and social drinkers (e.g., Parker et al., 1974; Rosen and Lee, 1976). Episodes of impaired memory can be viewed as isolated instances of dysfunction, yet they are bound to disrupt the drinker’s continuity of experience between past and future. Memory is the remarkable capacity that records both interactions with the environment and mental events. These records of past I experience shape and mold later behavior, thereby connecting internal represen tations of past, present, and future.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, George Washington University, Washington, D. C., 20052, USA

    Shahin Hashtroudi

  2. Alcohol Research Center, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, 90024, USA

    Elizabeth S. Parker

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  1. Shahin Hashtroudi
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  2. Elizabeth S. Parker
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Addiction Research Foundation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Howard D. Cappell , Frederick B. Glaser , Yedy Israel , Harold Kalant , Wolfgang Schmidt , Edward M. Sellers  & Reginald C. Smart , , , , ,  & 

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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York

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Hashtroudi, S., Parker, E.S. (1986). Acute Alcohol Amnesia. In: Cappell, H.D., et al. Research Advances in Alcohol and Drug Problems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7743-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7743-0_5

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