获取Cakephp Auth组件用户相关模型而不分配变量

I have a user model that belongs to Role, therefore the role field, in $this->Auth->user('role') is an associative array of the associated role table fields. I assume that this is a relatively common situation, and I'm assuming that there is a better way to access the 'role' field of my Role model through the Auth component without having to assign $this->Auth->user('role') to a different variable.

Am I correct in this, or am I up in the night?

I ask, because I would like to use it in a conditional, and I'm thinking there must be a way to not have to assign it to another variable first, and I don't understand it.

Okay, since this isn't really used much in the docs, apparently the way to do this is to dot the submodel.

I was thinking that there might be some method chaining way to do it, but it's a bit simpler than that.

$this->Auth->user('Role.role');

I'm not used to using dot notation in php, so it threw me off a bit.