Decrease of iconic memory after alcohol.

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Abstract
The rate of information loss from iconic memory was determined in 12 university students (men, aged 21-33 yr) in a repeated-measures design after 0.0, 0.414 and 0.828 g of alcohol/kg of body wt as vodka containing 40% alcohol. The information loss was measured by a partial-report technique: 1 of 3 tones is presented after a variable interstimulus interval (ISI) following a brief presentation (50 ms) of a 3 .times. 4 letter matrix. The tone instructs the subject which of the 3 rows of letters to report. The number of correctly reported letters decreases as the ISIs increase and the rate of decrease measures the decay of information in iconic memory. Five ISIs, 0, 50, 150, 400 and 750 ms, were used. Alcohol produced no change in rate of information loss but did cause a dose-related performance decrement at all ISIs. This impairment suggested that alcohol impairs either the acquisition of data into iconic memory or the extraction of data from this memory system.

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