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Abstract
Alcoholism represents a health threat of major proportion which encompasses a wide variety of physiological, sociological, and psychological traumata. A consistent property of alcohol is its capacity to alter memory processes. In fact, memory disturbances are a common clinical complaint of detoxified alcoholics in treatment programs.
This study investigated the effects of regular alcohol use on subsequent sober-state memory performance. Verbal and nonverbal (visual/figural) memory abilities, as measured by the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) and Continuous Visual Memory Test (CVMT), are compared in detoxified chronic, male alcoholics (n = 37) and age and education-matched controls (n = 37). Further, this study explored the relationships between alcoholics self-ratings of memory functions and obtained scores on the CVLT and CVMT, and the associations between drinking history and consumption variables and memory performance.
Alcoholics recalled significantly less verbal and figural material at both immediate recall and delayed recall than did the controls. Alcoholics exhibited a greater differential deficit for the figural as compared with the verbal material.
Years of drinking, amount consumed, and days since the last drink corresponded with fewer CVLT and CVMT hits. The relationships between CVLT impairment and drinking consumption variables were not significant; however, CVMT impairment was significantly correlated with duration of drinking and days since the last drink. Additionally, the majority of alcoholics reported their father abused alcohol.
Observed memory status was not correlated with self-ratings of memory functions. Affective disturbance was not associated with self-ratings of memory functioning or CVLT impairment; however, depression was weakly associated with CVMT impairment.
Controls were more accurate in predicting memory performance than alcoholics. Alcoholics demonstrated a tendency to over-estimate their predicted performance. Finally, findings here discussed in the context of current research, clinical implications, and suggestions for future research were offered.
