Verbal and visuospatial performance in male alcoholics: A test of the premature-aging hypothesis.

Abstract

Two versions exist of the premature-aging hypothesis for neuropsychological deficits in alcoholics: (a) accelerated lateralized hemispheric differences and (b) generalized dysfunction. Evidence for the former version is inconsistent, and the latter has not been formally tested. Using a paired-associate learning test that has separate verbal and visuospatial subtests of the same structure and method, elderly control subjects (N = 24) performed significantly worse than middle-aged control subjects (N = 36) on both learning subtests. For subjects between 30-and 80-years-old, increasing age resulted in increasing errors. According to the generalized dysfunction hypothesis, performance of alcoholics should be similar to that of the elderly, showing impairment compared to control subjects on both learning tests. However, alcoholics (N = 36) performed at the same level as the middle-aged control subjects on verbal learning and were significantly poorer on visuospatial learning. The generalized dysfunction version of the premature-aging hypothesis for performance of alcoholics on neuropsychological tests was not supported.

Effects of Age on Event-Related Potentials in Chronic Alcoholics: A Multimodal Study

“…Such similari ties were not found in this study, both groups differing in all parameters except N2 latency, in keeping with differ ences found by neuropsychological tests [23,24], and late ERPs [25][26][27], Pfefferbaum et al [28] and Porjesz et al [29] have reported impaired sensory filtering mechanisms in alcoholics, which appear to function correctly in elderly people. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that some specific similarities exist between ERPs of alcoholics and older healthy subjects.…”

Memory evaluation of alcoholics with Russell's revised Wechsler Memory Scale

“…However, Shelton, Parsons, and Leber (1982) and Shelton et al (1984) have argued convincingly against the use of tasks that vary with respect to structure and process in laterality studies. The two RWMS subtests, while similar in terms of process (recall), are clearly different in terms of structure.…”

“…However, most investigators have demonstrated memory disturbances on tests that are of limited clinical utility. The most notable exception to this was the use by Shelton et al (1984) of the Stark Test, but even this instrument has infrequent clinical use. Thus, there is a need to identify a memory battery that will be clinically useful in the assessment of memory functioning in alcoholics.…”

“…Furthermore, the use of scale scores for estimation of severity of impairment would provide insight into the practical significance of the findings. Because age and number of years of abuse often have been reported to be moderators of alcoholics' performance on neuropsychological measures (e.g., Ryan & Butters, 1980;Tarter, 1973), these measures were used as independent variables.…”

Assessment of prose recall performance in chronic alcoholics: Recall of essential versus detail propositions

“…Although the mild generalized brain dysfunction hypothesis appears to be the best descriptor of the data, one problem still remains: in contrast to the many studies of alcoholics that have clearly shown their impairment on perceptual-spatial tasks subserved by the right hemisphere (as reviewed by Tivis, 1993), impairment on verbal tasks subserved by the left hemisphere has not consistently been demonstrated (Cutting, 1978;Drake, Hannay & Gam, 1990;Ellenberg, Rosenbaum, Goldman, & Whitman, 1980;Fabian, Parsons, & Shelton, 1984;Forsberg & Goldman, 1985;Ryan & Lewis, 1988;Shelton, Parsons, & Leber, 1984;Yohman & Parsons, 1985). A variety of reasons for these inconsistencies have been reviewed, including level of task difficulty and other methodological problems (Tivis, 1993).…”