Citation

Smith ME, Oscar-Berman M. J. Stud. Alcohol 1992; 53(5): 514-518.

Affiliation

SAM Technology, Inc., San Francisco, California 94107.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1992, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

1405646

Abstract

A concurrent-task paradigm was utilized to examine the availability of limited-capacity information-processing resources in long-term chronic alcoholism. Normal control subjects and detoxified long-term alcoholics did not differ in their performance of a primary task that required an assessment of the meaning of foveally-presented words. However, reaction time measures indicated that the abstinent alcoholics were relatively impaired in their ability to concurrently perform a secondary task that required them to detect randomly-occurring and spatially-distributed visual probe stimuli. This impairment is interpreted as reflecting an abnormal limitation in the attentional resources abstinent alcoholics have available for task performance. The relationship between this deficit and the types of biological abnormalities and neuropsychological impairments commonly observed in alcoholism is discussed.

Language: en