Description
Cognitive control, a facet of executive functioning, is engaged under high conflict and enables us to flexibly regulate behaviors by suppressing automatic, but contextually irrelevant behaviors, and produce appropriate-goal relevant actions instead. Executive deficits are associated with the development and maintenance of alcohol use disorders (AUD), as alcohol interferes with decision making and goal-directed behavior. This results in deficient self-regulation, considered to underlie the inability to abstain from excessive alcohol consumption. However, current knowledge on gender differences in cognitive control is rudimentary and inconsistent. To address this gap, we examined cognitive control deficits in AUD as a function of gender. Archival data from 121 participants (age= 51.9±13.1), comprising 62 abstinent individuals with a history of AUD (32 men) and 59 demographically matched control participants (CONT, 31 men) were analyzed. The AUD group reported a history of heavy drinking, met DSM-IV criteria for lifetime alcohol abuse or dependence, and abstained from alcohol for at least four weeks prior to participation. Cognitive control was probed with the Stroop color-word interference task, which consists of color words displayed in different color fonts that match (CONG) or are incongruous with the word meaning (INCONG). Greater response conflict on INCONG than CONG stimuli is reflected in decreased accuracy and delayed response times, which is termed Stroop interference (SI). Data were analyzed with a 2 (Group) x 2 (Gender) x 4 (Condition) ANCOVA with age as a covariate. Correlational analyses examined associations between both SIs and drinking and motivational characteristics, personality and mood scales, and measures of memory and cognitive ability. The AUD group exhibited lower accuracy during INCONG trials and larger SI for accuracy relative to the CONT group, indicating higher sensitivity to cognitive conflict. SI correlated with alcohol-related variables. Further, the AUD group showed marginally slower performance on INCONG trials and exhibited a marginally larger SI for response latency compared to CONT. No Group x Gender interactions were present. These results provide further evidence of the residual deficits of cognitive control associated with a history of AUD, as impaired ability to control excessive alcohol consumption may present a risk for relapse.
