Original title: Development of the Alcohol-Linked Typical Experienced Responses Scale
Kohsuke Yamamoto, Mami Kato, Ryo Eguchi · September 2026
People feel different things when they drink alcohol, and these personal experiences link to their risk of alcohol use disorders. Older surveys only measured narrow areas, like expectations or physical effects. To fix this, researchers developed the Alcohol-Linked Typical Experienced Responses (ALTER) Scale using descriptions from Japanese adult drinkers. The new survey captures both good and bad, as well as mental and physical, reactions across five areas: easier communication, negative emotions, mental slowdown, relaxation, and bodily sensations. The tool proved reliable over a one-month test. Importantly, people with higher tendencies toward problematic drinking reported stronger mental reactions—both rewarding and unpleasant ones—compared to others. However, their physical body responses showed no meaningful differences. This framework helps show how personal reactions relate to drinking risks.
Imagine you are rating a movie. You might say it was funny, scary, or boring—those are different dimensions of your experience. If you only ask "was it good or bad?" you miss a lot. Similarly, this survey doesn't just ask if alcohol makes people feel good or bad; it separates out five specific ways it changes their experience, from making them more sociable to slowing their thinking.
Doctors and researchers studying alcohol use disorder need to know not just how much someone drinks, but how alcohol actually feels to them. This new questionnaire captures five separate dimensions of that experience, from social ease to cognitive fuzziness. It could help identify who is at risk based on their personal response profile.
The ALTER Scale is validated only in Japanese adults who are habitual drinkers, so results may not generalize to other cultures or non-drinkers. The measure relies on recalled experiences, which may not match real-time physiological responses. The study does not establish whether the scale predicts future drinking behavior or AUD onset, only concurrent associations.
Ask anything about this paper. Answers come from its abstract, and say so when the abstract doesn't cover your question.
Development of the Alcohol-Linked Typical Experienced Responses Scale — Kohsuke Yamamoto, Mami Kato, Ryo Eguchi — PsyArXiv — doi:10.31234/osf.io/jkc8h_v1
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.