VIGILANCE AND ICONIC MEMORY IN CHILDREN AT HIGH-RISK FOR ALCOHOLISM

Objective: Previous studies report reduced visual event-related potent ial (ERP) amplitudes in young males at high risk for alcoholism. These findings could involve difficulties at several stages of visual proce ssing. This study was aimed at examining vigilance performance and ico nic memory functions in children at high risk or low risk for alcoholi sm. Method: Sustained vigilance and retrieval from iconic memory were evaluated in 54 (29 male) white children at high risk and 47 (25 male) white children at low risk for developing alcoholism. Children were a lso grouped according to gender and age (younger: 8-12 years; older: 1 3-18 years). Results: No differences in visual sensitivity, response c riterion or reaction time were associated with risk status on the degr aded visual stimulus version of the Continuous Performance Test. For t he Span of Apprehension, no differences were found due to risk status when only 1 or 5 distracters were presented, although with 9 distracte rs a significant effect of risk status was found when it was tested as an interaction with gender and age (decreased accuracy for older high risk boys compared to older low-risk boys). Conclusions: These findin gs suggest that ERP deviations are not attributable to stages of visua l processing deficits, but represent difficulty involving more complex utilization of information. Implications of these results are that th e differences between high- and low-risk children that have been repor ted previously for visual ERP components (e.g., P300) are not attribut able to deficits of attentional or iconic memory mechanisms.