Field Dependence and Organic Brain Deficit in Chronic Alcoholics

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Abstract
Although alcoholism and perceptual field dependence are known to be related, the nature of this relationship is undetermined. On the one hand, the predisposition hypothesis suggests that perceptual dependence and the personality characteristics that accompany it predispose an individual to select alcohol as a consistent coping mechanism, while on the other hand the consequence hypothesis indicates that perceptual field dependence is a result of alcohol's insult to the cortex. To assess the value of these two hypotheses and the relationships involved therein, 36 hospitalized male alcoholics were studied to determine their age, length of drinking history, level of field dependence, education, abstract thinking ability, and signs of organic brain deficit. The correlations that emerged indicated that neither of these two major hypotheses are adequate to encompass all of the data, and that an alternative combination of the two hypotheses may be tenable until adequate longitudinal data become available. That is, perhaps moderate to high levels of field dependence and accompanying personality characteristics predispose an individual to alcoholism, and the effects of alcohol further elevate the perceptual dependence. It was further suggested that what is normally assumed to be an effect of alcohol may actually be either an alcohol-accelerated aging process, or the combined effect of alcohol and age.

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