Correlates of Alcoholic Blackout Experience

Correlates of Alcoholic Blackout Experience

8

Reproduction, and by Davies [24] for Trail Making, A and B. The drinking
quality and medical variables were all coded as present (i.e. abnormal) or
absent. Abnormal GGT was defined by hospital policy as > 56 IU/L. The
author made an overall clinical judgement of the presence or absence of
intellectual impairment on the basis of the neuropsychological data.

Results

Blackouts and severity of alcohol problem

Hospital file data indicated that 58% (39 of 67) of the sample reported
blackouts. The presence or absence of blackouts was cross-tabulated against
various measures of alcohol problem severity. The presence of blackouts was
associated to some degree with some indices of severity (withdrawal
symptoms and loss of control), but not with duration of problem drinking,
physical complications or abnormal liver function. Table 1 presents these data.

Insert Table 1 about here

Blackouts and cognitive functioning

The participants in this research were, taken collectively, clearly
intellectually impaired. Their scores on alcohol-vulnerable cognitive measures

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