On a simulated gambling task (SGT), designed to examine the mechanisms behind skewed decision-making of substance abusers, Fein and colleagues’ (2006a) show that, in contrast to LTAA, TNAD showed normal decision-making. This is consistent with only moderate elevation of externalizing symptoms, social deviance proneness and family density of alcoholism in the TNAD sample compared to large elevations of these measures in LTAA (di Sclafani et al., 2007). Finally, we have recently shown intact cognition in TNAD vs. NAC, with an unanticipated finding of better performance of TNAD in the attention domain, possibly involving compensatory attentional strategies in heavy drinking functional alcoholics (Smith and Fein, 2010).
