br Materials and method br Results br Discussion The

Materials and method
Results
Discussion The present study was one of the first to examine the predictive effect of executive functioning on the initiating of the first alcoholic drink and binge drinking episode among young adolescents, and the first to examine adolescents who were alcohol-naïve at baseline. The results indicated that relatively weak working memory predicted both the initiating of the first alcoholic drink and the first binge drinking episode, beyond the effect of response inhibition. In addition, relatively poor response inhibition predicted the initiating of drinking beyond the effect of working memory, however, no effect was found for the prediction of first binge drinking episode. Particularly adolescents from SE education revealed relatively poor working memory functioning and response inhibition, a finding supported by previous studies (Barkley, 1997; Pihl et al., 1990; Nigg et al., 2006). It seems likely that the a poorer level of executive functioning, observed in these adolescents, place them at risk for an early initiating of (binge) drinking which eventually might increase the risk for problematic alcohol use, later in adolescence (King and Chassin, 2007). The findings of this crf1 study are in agreement with those of Khurana and colleagues (2012) who found that executive functioning, and more specifically working memory, predicted increase in frequency of drinking among young adolescents. Fernie and colleagues (2013) found similar results, revealing that response inhibition (and two other measures of impulsivity) predicted alcohol use six months later. Nigg and colleagues (2006) found that executive functioning predicted problem drinking behavior in high risk adolescents (adolescents from alcoholic families). In their study, poor response inhibition at age 12–14 predicted the onset of alcohol related problems at age 15–17. However, unlike Nigg et al. (2006), we did not find a predictive effect of response inhibition on binge drinking. A different sample, a different task, a different outcome variable and different analyzing techniques were used in the current study, which might explain the divergent results. It is possible that the Stroop task, used in villi study to assess response inhibition, was less sensitive in detecting differences compared to the working memory task, perhaps explaining why we did not find a unique effect of response inhibition on the initiating of the first binge drinking episode. In addition, results indicate that decision making is impaired after alcohol consumption. Good working memory functioning allows better decision making. It therefore might be possible that poorer working memory functioning impairs decision making resulting in more drinking/binge drinking (George et al., 2005). Khurana and colleagues (2012) found that impulsivity fully mediated the effect of working memory on the drinking behavior of adolescents, suggesting that weaknesses in working memory affect behavior through disinhibition and impulsivity. Contrary to what Khurana and colleagues (2012) found, the results of the present study indicated that at least two executive functions uniquely contributed to the prediction of the initiating of drinking behavior. In addition, in the present study, working memory was a unique predictor of binge drinking in adolescents while disinhibition was not. The latter finding is in agreement with several studies that have found associations between binge drinking and working memory functioning (Stephens and Duka, 2008a; Crego et al., 2009; Squeglia et al., 2011). However, these cross-sectional studies (Crego et al., 2009; Squeglia et al., 2011) do not shed light on the direction of the relation. Although the results of the present study do not rule out a reverse effect of alcohol use on cognitive functioning (e.g., bidirectional effect cf. Peeters et al., 2014), the results do reveal that some weaknesses in executive functioning precede the initiating of drinking behavior. The continued use of alcohol may aggravate the pre-existing deficits (Khurana et al., 2012; Peeters et al., 2014), causing delay in development or even decline in the performance on executive functioning tasks.