Parents' escape drinking evokes children's negative response to alc...( extend these findings to encompass chi...)

Dr. Mennella's laboratory earlier reported [Chemical Senses 1998; 23:11-17] that 6- to 13-month-old infants with greater previous exposure to alcohol (inferred from questionnaires about parental drinking) could discriminate its smell from the smell of vanilla and that those children behaved differently in response to alcohol-scented toys. That study showed both that the alcohol smell evoked a behavioral response and that sensory learning based on smell is keenly selective, she said.

In today's study, 83 girls and 67 boys were presented with plastic squeeze bottles, each of which contained the odor of beer, bubble gum, sour milk (pyridine), or a neutral odor (mineral oil). The researchers delivered gentle puffs of air from the squeeze bottles into the children's nostrils and asked them if they liked or disliked the different odors. When the children liked an odor, they passed that squeeze bottle to a stuffed Big Bird toy; if they disliked an odor, they passed that bottle to an Oscar-the-Grouch toy so that he could throw it in his garbage can.

The mother and, when possible, the father answered questions about alcohol use. Parents who drank alcohol to alter their mental state or lessen feelings of unhappiness were considered escape drinkers; those who reported drinking to escape also were found to drink more alcohol than those who did not. Of the 150 children who participated in the study, 25 had mothers and 30 had at least one parent (mother, father, or both) who reported drinking to escape.

Most children (86 percent) liked the bubble gum odor and disliked (89 percent) the sour milk odor. About half (53 percent) liked the beer odor. When the researchers grouped the data according to whether the parents drank to escape, the differences were highly significant: 66 percent of chi
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Contact: Ann Bradley
abradley@willco.niaaa.nih.gov
301-443-3860
NIH/National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
13-Aug-2000