Are you impaired? : Developing a task sensitive to the impairing effects of alcohol and drugs using a combined compensatory tracking and dual attention task

As the use of prescription cannabis, psychiatric medications, and new psychoactive substances increases, concerns have been raised over how best to assess drug intoxication, particularly since there are no consistent biological markers of impairment for substances such as cannabis. Subsequently, there has been growing interest in cognitive tests of impairment, for which divided attention shows promise as a functional biomarker of acute drug and alcohol intoxication. In this study, we examined whether a newly developed gamified dual-task test of impairment, 'Save the Bunnies' would be sensitive to acute alcohol intoxication. We recruited 36 participants in order to test for differences in task performance in an alcohol vs placebo condition at BrAC levels of 0.05% ascending, 0.08%, and 0.05% descending. Overall, three of the four performance measures on StB were sensitive to alcohol intoxication, including tracking accuracy, reaction time, and hit accuracy, with moderate to large magnitude differences between conditions. In addition, we compared Save the Bunnies! against a commercially available dual-task test of impairment, the Druid, in order to establish convergent validity, compare the sensitivity of each test, and assess user preference. Overall, correlational measures between Save the Bunnies! and Druid were lower than expected. The Druid also appeared to lack sensitivity when classifying individuals on the basis of its impairment guidelines.