Preservation of implicit memory in adult children of alcoholics.
The authors investigated implicit memory in 21 adult children of alcoholics (ACAs) and 24 control individuals (all college undergraduates) who performed a serial reaction time task (SRT) to evaluate their implicit memory performance and their formation of new associations. Each group was presented with 5 blocks of 100 trials per block in which Blocks 1-4 contained a 10-item repeating sequence; Block 5 was a pseudo-random sequence. The latency difference between Block 4 and Block 5 presumably measure implicit memory. The amount of implicit memory did not differ (in ms) between the ACAs (M = 55 ms) and the controls (M = 67 ms). Implicit memory (at least as measured by the SRT task) appears to be preserved in ACAs.
Ferraro
F Richard
FR
Department of Psychology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks 58202-8380, USA. f_ferraro@und.nodak.edu
Gabriel
Melissa
M
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism; D002648:Child; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires