A dual‐process exploration of binge drinking: Evidence through behavioral and electrophysiological findings

The dual‐process model, describing addictive disorders as resulting from an
imbalance between increased automatic approach behaviors towards the substance
and reduced abilities to control these behaviors, constitutes a sound theoretical
framework to understand alcohol‐use disorders. The present study aimed at
exploring this imbalance at behavioral and cerebral levels in binge drinking, a pattern
of excessive alcohol consumption frequently observed in youth, by assessing both
reflective control abilities and automatic processing of alcohol‐related stimuli.
For this purpose, 25 binge drinkers and 25 comparison participants performed a
Go/No‐Go task during electrophysiological recording. Inhibition abilities were
investigated during explicit (ie, distinguishing alcoholic versus nonalcoholic drinks)
and implicit (ie, distinguishing sparkling versus nonsparkling drinks, independently
of their alcohol content) processing of beverage cues. Binge drinkers presented
poorer inhibition for the explicit processing of beverage cues, as well as reduced
N200 amplitude for the specific processing of alcohol‐related stimuli. As a whole,
these findings indicated inhibition impairments in binge drinkers, particularly for
alcohol cues processing and at the attentional stage of the cognitive stream. In line
with the dual‐process model, these results support that binge drinking is already
characterized by an underactivation of the reflective system combined with an
overactivation of the automatic system. Results also underlined the influence of
explicit processing compared with implicit ones. At the clinical level, our findings
reinforce the need to develop intervention methods focusing on the inhibition of
approach behaviors towards alcohol‐related stimuli.