An Investigation of Vetrbal Spatial Functioning in Chronic Alcoholics

Abstract

The mild generalized brain dysfunction hypothesis of alcoholic impairment predicts that, as a group, alcoholics will be impaired on both right- and left-hemisphere spatial functioning tests. A verbal-spatial problem-solving task (Luria, 1980) composed of explicitly spatial problems and comparative problems was developed and administered along with a well-known visual spatial problem-solving task (Block Design) to 24 sober male alcoholics and 24 peer controls. As expected, alcoholics performed more poorly and made more configurational errors than controls on Block Design. In accord with the mild generalized hypothesis, alcoholics performed more poorly than peer controls on the more explicitly spatial verbal problems, but not on the easier comparative problems.