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AAAS to Develop Science-Based Teaching Tools on Underage Alcohol Use |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Efforts to halt underage drinking often focus on peer pressure and the prevention of risky behaviors, but the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is undertaking a new federally funded project to give middle-school children a science-based understanding of what can happen to them if they use alcohol. The three-year project, called The Science Inside Alcohol, will incorporate recent advances in neuroscience that have been shedding new light on how alcohol affects the body. It is getting underway as a new study in the September issue of the journal Prevention Science suggests that teachers and parents should pay attention to alcohol prevention as early as the fourth grade. It will offer students, and their adult teachers, a look at key scientific concepts related to alcohol use and abuse in simple, direct language. Far more brain development takes place during the teenage years than previously thought and that development can be seriously damaged by alcohol consumption. For example, research by Linda Spear, a distinguished professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, shows that adolescents are less sensitive to the physical effects that emerge during intoxication and the hangover that follows. Scientists have identified some of the challenges students face in developing a proper biological understanding of alcohol's effects. Studies suggest, for example, that middle-school and high-school students have difficulty thinking of the human body as a chemical system and have little knowledge about the elements composing the living body. The education project will develop detailed teachers' guides to help teachers integrate the content into biology, chemistry or health curricula.
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