SELECTIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL DYSFUNCTION IN ADOLESCENT SONS OF ALCOHOLIC FATHERS

Current research indicates that family history of alcoholism defines a population at risk, and that offspring of alcoholics may be at high risk for a number of social, behavioral, and cognitive abnormalities. Genetic hypotheses of alcoholism have suggested that the neuro-psychological deficits associated with chronic alcohol abuse might predate the onset of alcoholism. Studies with prealcoholic children or adolescent offspring, however, have been few in number and inconclusive. Research has been unable to clarify the extent to which deficits found among chronic alcoholics in abstract problem-solving, learning and memory, and perceptuomotor skills were consequences of the alcohol abuse and its attendant problems (e.g., head injury, malnutrition, etc.) or, rather, predated the adult alcoholism. This study, therefore, compared the neuropsychological performance of two groups of adolescent males: 30 sons of alcoholic fathers (FHP) and 30 adolescent males without first-degree familial alcoholism (FHN). It was hypothesized that, although groups were equivalent in age, grade level, socioeconomic status (SES), and estimated IQ, the nonalcoholic FHP adolescents would perform differently on tests of nonverbal reasoning, abstract problem-solving, and set persistence; verbal and visual learning and memory; and perceptuomotor coordination, organization, and motor speed. It was further hypothesized that depression and anxiety would be related to neuropsychological test performance. Nonparametric methods of group comparison found tendencies for FHP adolescents to perform less well on a delayed recall task of visual memory and to make more errors on a test of visual tracking and cognitive flexibility. Exploratory stepwise discriminant analyses found that eight variables contributed to overall group differences, but statistical limitations required that such findings of FHP-FHN group differences be considered suggestive. In general, FHP and FHN adolescents performed similarly on all neuropsychological measures. Test performance was unrelated to measures of depression and anxiety in both groups. Performance comparisons with earlier studies and normative samples, and the implications for this failure to replicate previously reported group differences between offspring at risk for alcohol-related life problems and normal controls are discussed.