Cognitive-perceptual deficit in an alcoholism spectrum disorder.

It was hypothesized that alcoholics and antisocial patients would resemble one another with respect to their pattern of performance on three cognitive-perceptual tasks related to frontal lobe functioning. Using a discriminant function analysis, it was found that alcoholics and antisocial patients were both significantly differentiated from psychiatric controls and college students on the basis of their cognitive-perceptual performance. Moreover, as predicted, alcoholics and antisocial patients were themselves indistinguishable. Consistent with the etiological model, these findings held for both younger and older alcoholics. In addition, it was found that cognitive-perceptual deficit among alcoholics was positively related both to the amount of alcohol consumed per drinking occasion and to the experience of arrest by the police. The results point to a psychological affinity between primary alcoholism and antisocial personality and affirm the relevance of prefrontal-type deficits to problems of control and socialization.