Communicative competence in sons of alcoholics

Sons of alcoholic (SA), depressive (SD), and social drinking (SN) fathers gave 3-min speeches under low- and high-stress conditions. Trained raters, unaware of group membership, scored each speech on a variety of communicative competence dimensions. The results gave evidence that the SA group, relative to the SN group, showed deficits in all six speech variables. Further results suggested that the SA group was unaffected by level of stress, while the SD group showed a decrease in communicative clarity from speech 1 (low stress) to speech 2 (high stress). The results suggest lower levels of communicative competence among adult sons of alcoholics. The implication of this finding with regard to the psychosocial functioning of children of alcoholics is discussed.