Asking the right questions: problem solving in male alcoholics and male alcoholics with Korsakoff's syndrome

The performance of alcoholics and alcoholics with Korsakoff's syndrome was compared with that of nonalcoholic controls on a task which required the generation of a series of questions for the solution of object and digit/letter identification problems. Each subject attempted to determine which of a set of stimuli (objects, letters, or numbers) the examiner had arbitrarily preselected as correct. The nonalcoholic control subjects asked constraint-seeking questions which reduced alternatives by inquiring about general categories (e.g., "Is it a tool?"). In contrast, the two groups of alcoholic patients assumed the far less efficient strategy of asking hypothesis-scanning and pseudo-constraint questions which provided information only about one of the possible stimuli (e.g., "Is it the saw?"). This similarity in the problem-solving strategies of alcoholics both with and without Korsakoff's syndrome is consistent with the hypothesis that the problem-solving deficits of Korsakoff patients are apparent before the acute onset of their amnesic symptoms. These deficits may be due to alcohol-induced damage to the anterior and posterior cerebral cortical association areas which mediate problem-solving and visuoperceptual functions.