The impact of fathers' drinking on cognitive loss among social drinkers

This chapter examines cognitive loss in social drinkers. The question of concern is whether the relationship between increased levels of alcohol consumption and reduced sober cognitive performance is misspecified. In particular, does reduced abstraction performance in social drinkers result from parental heavy drinking rather than, as we have proposed, from social drinkers' current use of alcohol. Because offspring of alcoholics may be at high risk for cognitive deficits even in childhood, these deficits may be transmitted in alcoholic families. Thus, the relationship between increased drinking and sober cognitive loss might be eliminated if parental drinking is controlled. We report here, however, that the effects of current alcohol use on abstraction performance in a representative sample of employed men and women cannot be accounted for by fathers' drinking. Our findings indicate the need for further research on both the cognitive effects of parental drinking and current alcohol use.