Alcoholics' self-assessment of their neuropsychological functioning in everyday life.

Abstract

Self-reports of impairment in everyday cognitive and perceptuomotor functioning for the 6 months that preceded treatment were investigated in 60 male, middle-aged alcoholics and for a comparable time period in 60 nonalcoholic controls matched on age, education, and Shipley Vocabulary age. Alcoholics reported significantly more everyday impairment than did controls in memory, higher cognitive functions, language skills, and perceptual-motor function. Laboratory tests of neuropsychological performance revealed that the alcoholics were significantly poorer than controls on measures of memory, higher cognitive functions, and overall neuropsychological functioning, but test performances essentially were uncorrelated with self-reported everyday impairment and with self-reported levels of depression and anxiety. However, in both groups, measures of depression and anxiety were correlated significantly with self-perception of impairment. In alcoholics, quantity-frequency of drinking (QFI) was also correlated with reported impairment; chronicity was not. Multiple regression analyses indicate that in alcoholics, both quantity-frequency measures of alcohol intake and affective distress (depression, anxiety) made independent and roughly equal contributions to reported everyday impairment; in controls, only affective distress contributed significantly.