According to this view, researchers propose that chronic alcoholism results in global cognitive dysfunction, with subjects exhibiting a wide variety of cognitive deficit patterns. These cognitive changes suggest mild diffuse brain dysfunction. For example, Parsons and colleagues (1990) administered a battery of verbal and visuospatial tests comprising different factors that employed both left and right hemisphere functioning. The researchers found that the alcoholics performed significantly poorer than the nonalcoholic controls on tasks comprising all factors tested, suggesting that both left and right hemisphere functions were compromised.5 This finding lent support to the diffuse brain dysfunction model.
