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Abstract
Heavy or problematic alcohol use among traditional college-aged youth (ages 18-24) continues to be on the rise. Thus, this study was interested in assessing the validity of implicit cognition measures: the Implicit Association Test and the Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT). The implicit cognition measures were used to assess alcohol-related cognitions. The IAT has been used several times in assessing implicit alcohol-related cognitions. However, this is the first study that has used the GNAT in assessing implicit alcohol-related cognitions. Additionally, the current study was interested in assessing if implicit alcohol-related cognitions would predict reasons for drinking and certain personality types. Results confirmed convergent validity between the IAT and GNAT. More specifically, participants were most likely to correctly and automatically pair alcoholic drinks and bad compared to all other combinations (nonalcoholic drinks + bad, alcoholic drinks + good, and nonalcoholic drinks + good). There were no significant relationships found between the implicit alcohol-related cognition measures and reasons for drinking and personality types. Implicit and explicit measures have found to be weakly correlated in past research. Thus, future directions on methods of assessing implicit and explicit measures should be of focus. Future directions and limitations are discussed further.