The prevalence of alcohol abuse continues to provide challenges for researchers attempting to understand the processes related to drinking behavior and to apply this understanding to the development of intervention and prevention programs. Alcohol expectancies consistently have been shown to relate to drinking behavior, with modification of expectancies predicting changes in drinking behavior. Memory processes have been proposed as the mechanism through which expectancies influence drinking behavior. Several studies have demonstrated a correlational relationship between implicit and explicit memory for alcohol expectancies and alcohol use. However, only two studies have directly examined this relationship with actual drinking behavior. Questions remain regarding the influence of alcohol consumption on both implicit and explicit memory for alcohol expectancies. This understanding is essential in the development of interventions focusing on the role of expectancies. These questions will be investigated using a placebo- control design. It is hypothesized that participants who receive a moderate dose of alcohol will report more alcohol-related behaviors on positive items of the implicit memory task, will report more positive outcomes and fewer negative outcomes on the explicit memory task, and will show the largest change between sessions on all measures relative to participants in the low dose, placebo, and control conditions.
