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Verbal fluency deficits in female alcoholics
L J Hewett1, S J Nixon, W Glenn
1University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Oklahoma City 73104.
Journal of Clinical Psychology
|September 1, 1991
Summary
Female alcoholics exhibit verbal fluency deficits, performing worse on cognitive tasks than controls. This suggests category shifting is more challenging than accessing words, impacting verbal fluency in alcoholism.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Alcohol use disorder is associated with cognitive impairments.
- Verbal fluency, a key cognitive function, may be affected by alcoholism.
- Understanding specific deficits can inform interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate verbal fluency deficits in female alcoholics.
- To compare performance on two distinct verbal fluency tasks.
- To explore the nature of cognitive impairments in alcoholism.
Main Methods:
- Utilized Thurstone's Word Fluency Test (TWFT) and a category fluency test.
- Compared performance of female alcoholics (n=48) with healthy controls (n=36).
- Analyzed performance differences between the two tests and between groups.
Main Results:
- Alcoholics performed significantly worse than controls overall.
- Controls showed greater difficulty with category fluency than TWFT.
- Alcoholics did not differ between the two tests, but performed worse on category fluency than controls.
Conclusions:
- Female alcoholics exhibit specific verbal fluency deficits, particularly in category shifting.
- The findings suggest that accessing the mental lexicon (TWFT) is less impaired than rapid task switching (category fluency).
- TWFT and category fluency tests may measure different aspects of verbal fluency, highlighting distinct cognitive impacts of alcoholism.