EFFECTS OF CUES ON MEMORY IN ALCOHOLICS AND CONTROLS

This study was conducted to determine whether alcoholics' memory diffi culties are due, in part, to access (retrieval) or to availability (re tention) deficits. Forty-four alcoholics (n = 20 females) and 44 contr ols (n = 22 females) teamed a paired associate list consisting of 12 a djective-CCC trigram pairs. Half of the subjects in each group leaned the list to a low degree of learning (DCL; 4/12 pairs); the remainder to a high DOL (8/12 pairs). Two distinct environmental contexts (provi ding implicit cues) were used during acquisition. Subjects then comple ted a cued recall tan explicit cue) test in either the same or a diffe rent room. Alcoholics were significantly inferior in the acquisition p hase on trials required to reach criterion, regardless of DCL required [F(1,68) = 10.92, p = 0.002]. The main effect for implicit cuing was not significant; similarly, there were no significant interactions. In contrast, the explicit cue manipulation produced a significant group x DOL interaction on the number of trigrams correctly recalled [F = (1 ,77) = 6.38, p = 0.01]; alcoholics' recall did not benefit from the hi gher DCL in contrast to a significant improvement in recall by control s. The failure of alcoholics to demonstrate improvement with higher le vels of learning is consistent with a deficit in the availability of i nformation. The results confirm previous reports of recovering alcohol ics' verbal leaning and memory dysfunction, and suggest that these def icits may be attributed, in part, to a deficit in the availability of information (retention).