Neuropsychological characteristics in children of alcoholics: Familial density

Objective: The purpose of high-risk studies is to find characteristics that allow the identification of subjects with a higher vulnerability to alcoho lism. The aim of this research was to verify if the familial density criter ion is useful for subtyping children of alcoholics with different neuropsyc hological characteristics. Method: A battery of neuropsychological tests wa s administered to 102 boys and girls of 7-15 years of age; 66 were children of alcoholics with a high (n = 32) and low (n = 34) familial density of al coholism, and 36 were children of nonalcoholic fathers with a negative fami ly history of the disorder. The battery included tests to assess attention, visuospatial abilities and frontal functions. Results: MANCOVAs showed tha t high-density children scored lower than children of nonalcoholic fathers in attentional and visuospatial tasks. There were no differences between lo w-density and negative family history children in these cognitive domains. Conclusions: These results suggest that children of alcoholics are not a ho mogeneous group. Children with multigenerational alcoholism, but not childr en with an alcoholic father, showed reduced performance in specific cogniti ve areas.