BINGE DRINKING by teenagers could put them at risk of memory loss. That's the conclusion of a new study to be discussed at the British Psychological Society's continuing annual conference at the RDS in Dublin today.
The event is a flagship event for psychologists and features presentations involving internationally recognised scholars.
A team of researchers from Northumbria University will speak about their findings on the effects of binge drinking on the prospective memory of young people, namely the ability to remember something they had intended to do in the future, such as paying a bill on time or returning a phone call.
Their study group completed a range of tasks including a self-report and video-based prospective memory task.
Dr Thomas Heffernan said: "If our findings are confirmed, it is feasible that binge drinking in the teenage years may impede important development of the brain that may underpin memory."
On a positive note, in a separate study discussed at the conference yesterday, it was found that doing exercise helps teenagers, especially girls, feel confident, while those who lacked confidence would feel less awkward if they were more active.
A five-year joint project between the Manchester Metropolitan University and Edinburgh University demonstrated that a teenager's physical self-worth decreased significantly between the ages of 11-16 years for females but not for their male counterparts.
Elsewhere, in a separate project, Amy Brogan of Trinity College Dublin and her colleagues discovered that obese people tend to see the causes of their weight problems as lying in a number of largely behavioural factors, such as a lack of physical activity and over-consumption, rather than in a family history or genetic component.
More than 70 per cent of the study group identified their obesity as directly caused by a lack of physical activity, overeating and comfort eating.
Yesterday the conference was told that children who are adopted from abroad eventually adjust to their new lives and do well, although up to a quarter of the children experience some persistent problems following their adoption.
That's according to Dr Elizabeth Nixon and her colleagues at TCD.
They studied 180 children and teenagers who had been adopted in Ireland from Romania, Russia, China, Vietnam and Ukraine.
Half of the children displayed levels of difficulty immediately after their adoption, such as feeding, sleeping and sensory problems.
Delegates are also due to hear about numerical skills among horses.
A team from the University of Essex said that in two tasks, apples were placed in containers to measure whether the horses would make a choice based on the number involved.
When given a choice, the horses in the study chose the containers with the most apples significantly more often.