In Table 2, we summarize neurocognitive studies of binge-drinking studies using standard neuropsychological tests. The Binge-Drinking Score method was employed in several of these to define research participant drinking groups (Townshend & Duka, 2005). Binge drinkers compared with nonalcohol drinkers evinced cognitive impairments in the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test, executive planning function, and episodic memory tasks—findings similar to frontal function deficits found in Korsakoff alcoholics (Hartley et al., 2004). Another report found that binge drinkers relative to nonbinging drinkers produced errors in a spatial working memory and pattern recognition tasks (Weissenborn & Duka, 2003). Furthermore, female compared with male binge drinkers were more impaired on these paradigms and unable to inhibit their response to an alerting stimulus in a vigilance task. Thus, binge drinking may be associated with deficits in frontal inhibitory control (Townshend & Duka, 2005).
