Inhibiting irrelevant information in adult children of people with alcoholism.
Adult children of people with alcoholism (ACAs; n = 21) and adults with no family history of alcoholism (non-ACAs; n = 24) completed a task designed to test inhibitory ability using a reaction-time based negative priming task. Although participants in the ACA group responded more slowly overall, they did not differ on this task as compared with participants in the non-ACA group. This pattern of results suggests that inhibitory ability is preserved in ACAs, at least within the context of the current negative priming task. The authors discuss study limitations and inconsistencies in the ACA literature.
Ferraro
F Richard
FR
Dept. of Psychology, Box 8380, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202-8380, USA. f_ferraro@und.nodak.edu
Douglas
Jason
J
Marino
Joanna
J
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism; D002648:Child; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011930:Reaction Time; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires