Effects of gender and alcoholism on verbal and visual-spatial learning.
Sex differences in cognitive abilities of chronic alcoholics were investigated using a paired-associates learning test with separate but similarly structured verbal and visual-spatial components. Four groups of 35 subjects each, equated for age and education, were tested: male and female alcoholics, and male and female community control subjects. As expected, sex differences were found on the component tasks: overall, nonalcoholic women performed significantly better than nonalcoholic men on the verbal measure, and nonalcoholic men performed better than nonalcoholic women on the visual-spatial measure. Nonalcoholic men had a larger discrepancy between component scores than nonalcoholic women, suggesting greater lateralization of cognitive functions; however, this difference did not reach significance. The effects of alcoholism were different for the sexes. Alcoholic women were not impaired on either the verbal or visual-spatial measure, but the alcoholic men demonstrated deficits in visual-spatial performance. In addition, they showed less difference between verbal and visual-spatial component scores than the other groups, suggesting that alcoholism attenuated the effects of hemispheric specialization for cognitive abilities normally found in men.
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D012737:Sex Factors; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception