Home interactions of high and low antisocial male alcoholics and their families

The aim of this study was to investigate the naturalistic interactions of two alcoholism subgroups during home dinnertime conversations.

Dinnertime conversations of 96 alcoholic and 47 control families were audiotaped and subsequently assessed via a multicomponent coding system involving trained raters who were blind to psychiatric status of participating families. To examine potentially important alcoholism types, two subgroups were formed on the basis of the male alcoholic's level of antisociality.

Across all groups, mothers' rate of communication to children was greater than fathers' to children for all communication variables; similarly, children's rate of communication to mothers exceeded their rate to fathers across all communication variables. Most interesting, however, was the finding that families of alcoholics reflecting higher levels of antisociality expressed lower levels of positivity, disagreement and instrumentality than did families of alcoholics who exhibited lower levels of antisociality.

Although expectations regarding generational differences across groups were confirmed, findings regarding the two alcoholism subgroups were opposite to expectations; that is, we had hypothesized that high antisocial alcoholics and their families would exhibit more overtly disruptive behavior than low antisocial alcoholics and their families. The interpretation and implication of these findings were discussed in terms of the importance and impact of the observational setting: in particular, that the home setting may allow for certain family coping strategies (e.g., disengagement) more so than a task-structured, laboratory setting.