Are Pictures Better than Words When Mapping Alcohol Expectancies

ARE PICTURES BETTER THAN WORDS WHEN MAPPING ALCOHOL EXPECTANCIES? C. Struble, C. Rainville, S. Fredrickson, L. McEwen, E. Velez, B. Stewart, M.S. Goldman, & R.R. Reich. University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, College of Arts and Sciences, Sarasota, FL 34243 Background: Previously, alcohol expectancies have been measured by using words. Word studies have shown expectancies to be correlated with drinking, and words have been manipulated in true experiments to show causal influence on alcohol consumption. Pictures were used rather than words in this task. Pictures may capture a more broad variety of responses when looking at individual differences in the expectancy processes influencing drinking. Method: 157 undergraduate students were presented with 32 images of drinking behaviors as part of a card sort task. The images showed positive, negative, and neutral images. Participants were asked to sort images into categories and then label the categories. The task had three purposes: 1) to test whether, like words, pictures could be mapped as memory networks, 2) to determine how these images were organized in memory, and 3) to determine any individual differences between non-, light, and heavy drinkers in memory organization of the images. Results: 1) Demonstrating face validity, pictures with similar content were grouped together. 2) Similar to the organization of alcohol expectancy words, images were organized based on the affective dimensions of valence and arousal. 3) There were only slight differences between drinker types. These differences tended to be in images with social/sexual content. Conclusion: Results 1 and 2 support future investigation of alcohol expectancies as images rather than words. However, there should be more focus on social and sexual images. Also, future studies should examine qualitative differences in the labeling of image categories