Selective attentional processing and the right hemisphere: effects of aging and alcoholism

Thirty-seven nonalcoholic individuals (22 women, 15 men), ages 26-76, and 36 abstinent alcoholic individuals (11 women, 25 men), ages 31-74, participated in a cued-detection task that assessed right hemisphere (RH) functioning associated with aging and alcoholism. Young controls were less reliant on cues following RH activation, which is consistent with the view that the RH has an advantage because it has the ability to attend to a broader spatial array than does the left hemisphere (LH). This RH advantage was not obtained in older controls or alcoholic participants. The pattern of results for the older nonalcoholic participants indicated that they neither benefited from valid cues following LH activation nor exhibited enhanced processing on invalid cue trials following RH activation. The results for the alcoholic participants were consistent with RH functional decline, but did not support the view that alcoholism and aging have synergistic effects.