Alcohol Expectancies: Mediators of Biopsychosocial Risk in Early Adolescence?

描述（由申请人提供）：青少年因饮酒而遭受许多严重的不良后果。最近的流行病学发现将青春期与酒精滥用和依赖的发展联系起来。这种同时发生的现象表明，青春期的发展过程可能会促进酒精参与的发展。这个项目调查了进入青春期的可能性，因为：1)这个年龄段可能是一个发展的“热点区域”，在这个区域，许多生物、心理和环境对饮酒的影响汇聚在一起；2)我们相信，我们频繁评估酒精使用的计划将为饮酒发展打开一个新的“窗口”，而不会产生与较早开始和较长时间调查相关的成本和可行性问题；最重要的是，我们之前对酒精预期的研究将这一时期作为理解饮酒开始的核心。在对儿童饮酒前预期的研究中，我们观察到一种认知转变，随着青少年的过渡：在青少年之前，儿童主要将负面结果与饮酒联系在一起，但到了青少年早期，饮酒主要与积极和令人兴奋的结果联系在一起。我们的目的是确定这种转变的来源，作为探索饮酒对发育的关键影响的一种手段。使用加速纵向/兄弟姐妹设计，我们将招募245个家庭，每个家庭都有一个8.5岁的孩子和一个与指数参与者年龄在三岁以内的同性兄弟姐妹。父母和孩子每年将接受3次评估，为期4-5年，共7个发育年。我们的目标是使用成长模型来：1)测量参与者进入青春期时选定的生物心理社会发展变化；2)确定这些变化中哪一个最能预测期望从主要消极到主要积极的变化；3)确定哪些变化最能预测饮酒的发展；4)通过期望变化的中介，检验青少年过渡期的哪些参数影响饮酒行为的发展。这些途径的识别应该澄清哪些发展过程不仅与饮酒相关，而且实际上通过预期机制有助于饮酒。增加对这些因果途径的理解将引导我们找到最重要的干预目标，并可能提出新的机制来延缓/预防饮酒的发生。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adolescents suffer many acute adverse consequences from alcohol use. Recent epidemiological findings have linked adolescence to the development of alcohol abuse and dependence. This co-occurrence suggests that the processes of adolescent development may encourage the development of alcohol involvement. This project investigates this possibility during entry into adolescence because: 1) this age range may be a developmental "hot zone," in which a number of biological, psychological, and environmental influences on drinking converge; 2) we believe our plan to frequently assess alcohol use will open a new "window" on drinking development without incurring cost and feasibility issues associated with an earlier start and lengthier investigation; and, most importantly, 3) our previous research on alcohol expectancies directs us to this period as central to understanding drinking onset. In studies of expectancies in children before drinking begins, we observed a cognitive shift with the transition to adolescence: before adolescence, children primarily associated negative outcomes with drinking, but by early adolescence, drinking was primarily associated with positive and arousing outcomes. Our intent is to identify the source of this shift as a means of probing key developmental influences on drinking. Using an accelerated longitudinal/sibling design, we will recruit 245 families, each with a child 8.5 years of age and a same-gender older sibling whose age is within three years of the index participant. Both parents and both children will be assessed three times per year for 4-5 years, to span 7 developmental years. Our aims are to use growth modeling to: 1) measure selected biopsychosocial developmental changes as participants move into adolescence; 2) determine which of these changes best predicts the change in expectancies from primarily negative to primarily positive; 3) determine which of these changes best predicts the development of drinking; and 4) test which parameters of the adolescent transition influence the development of drinking via mediation by expectancy change. Identification of such pathways should clarify which developmental processes are not just correlated with drinking, but actually contribute to drinking involvement through the expectancy mechanism. Increased understanding of these causal pathways will direct us to the most important targets for intervention, and may suggest new mechanisms that may be modified to delay/prevent drinking onset.