Table 1. Characteristics of the research participants.
Means and standard deviations (SD) are displayed for age, education, measures of drinking history, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS). Besides amount and duration of drinking, these characteristics did not differ significantly between the ALC and NC groups, with the exception of education, for which the NC group had more years on average (95% CI [0.0–1.7] years). Tables S1 and S2 describe the subgroups examined for heart rate and SCR. For those samples, the ALC and NC groups had similar education levels.
| Alcoholic participants | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All (N = 32) | Women (N = 16) | Men (N = 16) | ||||
| Mean | SD | Mean | SD | Mean | SD | |
| Age (years) | 55.2 | 9.9 | 56.9 | 9.4 | 53.5 | 10.5 |
| Education (years) | 14.9 | 2.0 | 15.7 | 2.0 | 14.1 | 1.8 |
| Duration of Heavy Drinking (years) | 16.2 | 5.9 | 15.3 | 4.9 | 17.1 | 6.9 |
| Daily Drinks | 11.7 | 9.3 | 10.1 | 8.3 | 13.4 | 10.3 |
| Length of Sobriety (years) | 8.8 | 11.2 | 11.5 | 12.0 | 5.9 | 9.8 |
| WAIS-III Full Scale IQ | 109.1 | 14.3 | 110.1 | 13.0 | 108.1 | 15.8 |
| WAIS-III Verbal IQ | 111.5 | 12.0 | 112.8 | 11.6 | 110.3 | 12.6 |
| WAIS-III Performance IQ | 104.1 | 17.4 | 104.9 | 16.4 | 103.3 | 18.8 |
| WMS-III Immediate Memory | 109.8 | 17.9 | 113.6 | 20.4 | 105.9 | 14.7 |
| WMS-III Delayed Memory | 112.0 | 18.5 | 115.6 | 22.9 | 108.4 | 12.3 |
| WMS-III Working Memory | 103.6 | 12.2 | 104.8 | 12.4 | 102.4 | 12.4 |
Notes.
One man drank during his time in the military service for about 2.5 years, decades prior to the scan, but this drinking was not severe and he reported that it did not impact his occupation, health, or personal life. Another man reported drinking heavily for 0 years in a prior study in our lab, but then after answering the same questionnaire for the present study, he reported that he recalled that, decades prior to the scan, he drank over 21 drinks per week for approximately a year. One woman reported that at most she drank a half bottle of wine a day (1–3 drinks) for at most 5 years, so we used 5 years as a conservative estimate. In prior (and subsequent) studies in our laboratory, she reported drinking less, so her DHD was set to 0 for those studies. All three participants had not been drinking heavily recently.