RESUMEN
Sipping, an early form of alcohol initiation, is associated with aspects of psychopathology and personality that reflect long-term risk for harmful alcohol use. In the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development cohort (N = 11,872), sipping by age 9-10 was concurrently associated with impulsivity, other aspects of externalizing, and prodromal schizophrenia symptoms. Still, these associations were cross-sectional in nature, leaving open the possibility that these features of psychopathology and personality might not reflect long-term risk for alcohol consumption and related harm across development. Here, we attempted to replicate baseline concurrent associations across three waves of data to extend concurrent associations to prospective ones. Most cross-sectional associations replicated across waves, such that impulsivity, other aspects of externalizing, reward sensitivity (e.g., surgency, sensation seeking), and prodromal schizophrenia symptoms were associated with increased odds of having sipped alcohol by the age of 12. Nevertheless, not all concurrent associations replicated prospectively; impulsigenic features did not reflect long-term risk for sipping. Thus, some psychopathology features appeared to reflect stable risk factors, whereas others appeared to reflect state-dependent risk factors. All told, sipping might not reflect long-term risk for harmful alcohol use, and the nature of sipping may change across development.
RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Previous research has established that certain features of personality (e.g., impulsivity), psychopathology (e.g., impulsivity, mood disorder, thought disorder), and contextual factors (e.g., parenting, parental alcohol use) are associated with an increased likelihood of having sipped alcohol in youth, and substance involvement and problems in adolescence and adulthood. What is less clear from the existing literature is whether well-established risk factors of substance use are consistent across sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, income, parental education). METHODS: We used a large, community sample of 9- and 10-year-olds (N = 11,872; 53% female) to examine whether various sociodemographic characteristics moderate the associations between sipping behavior and its various well-established correlates (e.g., impulsivity, behavioral inhibition and activation, psychopathology, parenting, and family conflict). RESULTS: There were small mean level differences in sipping across sociodemographic characteristics. Across sociodemographic characteristics, however, sipping was fairly uniformly associated with youth-reported impulsivity, behavioral activation, prodromal psychosis symptoms, mood and externalizing disorder diagnoses, family environment, and parental alcohol consumption indices. Effects were sometimes slightly more pronounced among groups for which alcohol consumption is relatively nonnormative: Sipping among female youth was slightly more associated with thought disorder psychopathology than among male youth (D = 0.07), and was slightly more associated with some aspects of psychopathology and impulsivity for Black youth than White and Hispanic youth (Ds were 0.07 and 0.09). CONCLUSIONS: Broadly, our findings suggest that the psychosocial correlates of precocious alcohol use are relatively consistent across sociodemographic factors.
