Chronic alcoholic males show cognitive improvement after inpatient treatment, with abstainers showing additional gains in vocabulary scores, suggesting mild organic cognitive deficits.
Abstinence may enhance vocabulary recovery after alcohol treatment; leaves open causality and applicability beyond this cohort.
The degree of cognitive deficit in chronic alcoholic males at onset of inpatient treatment and degree of recovery at discharge, plus a possible relationship between the latter and post-hospital drinking behaviors were assessed. 330 patients were classified as abstaining, improved, unimproved, or unclassified on the basis of their drinking behaviors during the first 3 mo. following discharge. The Hooper Visual Organization Test and the Shipley-Hartford were administered at admission and discharge as measures of cognitive impairment. All four groups showed significant improvement on the Hooper as well as on their Shipley Conceptual Quotient scores at discharge, but only the abstainers showed a significant gain in vocabulary scores. The results suggest a cognitive deficit consistent with mild organicity.
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Peter A. Ornstein (1977) studied this question.
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