A few recent studies have explored interactions among component cognitive processes and provide evidence that episodic memory and executive component processes can affect higher-order abilities. Together, these processes may explain unawareness of memory impairment (i.e., metamemory decline) in AUD, as compromise of autonoetic consciousness and strategic mnemonic search abilities were the principal cognitive mechanisms of metamemory decline in recently abstinent alcoholic patients (Le Berre et al., 2010). These compounded deficits could also hamper the learning of new complex semantic and procedural information in alcohol treatment entry and, therefore, potentially could have negative effect on efficiency—the essential ability—of cognitive-behavioral therapies during clinical treatment (Pitel et al., 2007b).
