Effects of gender and alcoholism on verbal and visual-spatial learning

Sex differences in cognitive abilities of chronic alcoholics were investigated using a paired-associates learning test with separate but similarly structured verbal and visual-spatial components. Four groups of 35 subjects each, equated for age and education, were tested: male and female alcoholics, and male and female community control subjects. As expected, sex differences were found on the component tasks: overall, nonalcoholic women performed significantly better than nonalcoholic men on the verbal measure, and nonalcoholic men performed better than nonalcoholic women on the visual-spatial measure. Nonalcoholic men had a larger discrepancy between component scores than nonalcoholic women, suggesting greater lateralization of cognitive functions; however, this difference did not reach significance. The effects of alcoholism were different for the sexes. Alcoholic women were not impaired on either the verbal or visual-spatial measure, but the alcoholic men demonstrated deficits in visual-spatial performance. In addition, they showed less difference between verbal and visual-spatial component scores than the other groups, suggesting that alcoholism attenuated the effects of hemispheric specialization for cognitive abilities normally found in men.