Cerebral hemispheric lateralization of cognitive deficits due to alcoholism.

Twenty chronic alcoholics and a group of matched control subjects were tested on verbal and visuospatial memory tasks in order to test directly the hypothesis that alcoholism disturbs cognitive functions subserved by the right hemisphere more than those subserved by the left hemisphere. The results provide some support for the hypothesis and indicate that information may be lost by pooling together test results from alcoholics which come from a mixture of verbal and nonverbal tasks.