Cognitive training in alcoholic men.

Three groups of alcoholic Ss (n?=?76) and one group of community nonalcoholic control subjects (n?=?36) were tested using a baseline battery of three clusters of neuropsychological tests measuring learning and memory, problem-solving, and perceptual-motor functioning. Alcoholics were divided into 3 groups: One group (n?=?25) received 12 hrs of memory training over the subsequent 2-wk period; a 2nd group (n?=?26) received a similar period of training in problem-solving techniques; and a 3rd group (n?=?25) received no training during the 2-wk period. Approximately 3 wks after the baseline testing, the same tests were readministered to the 3 groups. All 3 alcoholic groups performed significantly poorer than the control group on all 3 clusters of baseline tests but did not differ from each other on those clusters. At retest, the problem-solving group improved significantly more on the problem-solving tests than did the no-training group and manifested a trend to differ from the memory group but did not improve more than the other groups on memory or perceptual-motor tests. Although there was no overall differential improvement on memory tests by the memory-training group, younger Ss in that group improved significantly more than older Ss. This relation was not present in the other groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)