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Abstract: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was developed in response to reports of low validity of explicit (self-report) measures of attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices. Usually, people are unwilling to report what they think and feel about other races, groups, and nationalities. The IAT has been written about in many books, newspapers, journal articles, websites, and has been featured frequently on radio and television many times; its web site has now reached a peak of 5 million visits. However, despite this popularity its validity and particularly its reliability is under question. This article reports on the validity and reliability of the IAT. Four different experiments were conducted on 150 students at California State University, Long Beach to investigate the temporal reliability of IAT. Also students’ opinion (trust) about the validity and reliability of the test was evaluated. The results showed that while there are numerous reports of moderate validity of the test, its reliability as measured in this study, particularly for the first time users, is relatively low. Familiarity with similar tests, however, improves its reliability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article summarizes a symposium on new ways to change implicit alcohol-related cognitions, presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in Santa Barbara, California, organized by Wiers and Cox. During the past few years, research has demonstrated that implicit cognitions predict unique variance in prospective alcohol use and preliminary results indicate that they also predict treatment outcomes. The central question in this symposium was how implicit cognitions can be changed and how the changes will influence behavior. Field presented data showing that an attentional bias for alcohol can be altered by attentional training: heavy drinkers who were trained not to attend to alcohol stimuli reported less craving and drank less beer than those trained to attend to alcohol stimuli. Schoenmakers used a similar, clinically relevant attentional retraining (AR) procedure, heavy drinkers were trained not to attend to alcohol pictures or received no training. After the training, the AR group attended less to the alcohol pictures than the control group. Fadardi described the Alcohol Attentional Control Training Program (AACTP), which makes alcohol drinkers aware of the automatic, cognitive determinants of their drinking and aims to help them to gain control over these processes. Data were presented to support the effectiveness of the AACTP. Palfai presented data showing that alcohol drinkers can be taught to use implementation intentions to gain control over their drinking, which may be used to automatically activate self-control skills in the presence of alcohol cues. In his discussion, Stacy pointed out the importance of recent cognitive theories that integrate attention and memory processes—theories that can help us better understand the mechanisms involved in AR. Together, the studies presented demonstrate that there are promising new ways in which implicit alcohol-related cognitions and their effects on drinking can be changed. After further refinement, these procedures might be used in clinical interventions that have not previously addressed implicit cognitive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]