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There is clear evidence in the literature for permanent cerebral impairment due to prolonged alcohol abuse. Observation also suggests that there is a component of this cerebral impairment that is found immediately subsequent to heavy drinking and that is reversible. This study examined the time-course of recovery from this temporary impairment and delineated more specifically the neuropsychological functions that participate in the recovery. Four groups (N = 87) of hospitalized male alcoholics were tested after 6, 15, 21, and 110 days of abstinence using the Raven Progressive Matrices, the Trail-Making Test, the Memory for Designs, and the following subscales of the WAIS: Arithmetic, Digit Span, Block Design, Similarities, and Digit Symbol. The results indicated that significant improvement occurred during the third week of abstinence (between 15 and 21 days) on the Digit Span, Block Design, Similarities, Memory for Designs, Raven, and Trail-Making tests, but not on the Arithmetic and Digit Symbol tests. These results suggest that treatment programs that use a preliminary "drying-out" period should consider lengthening this period to 3 weeks to insure that patients are maximally responsive to psychotherapy.

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3 studies are reported relating individual differences in the Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS) score to a variety of measures. Using hospitalized alcoholics, hospital employees, and college students as 5s, the following relationships were found: (o) Sensation-seeking was positively related to educational attainment, intelligence level, and perceptual, spatial, and numerical aptitudes, and was negatively related to age. ( 6) No relationship was found between the SSS score and rural-urban factors. The results were felt to support the validity of the SSS and to have broad implications concerning the nature of stimulusseeking motivation and its role in human behavior. Avenues for future research were suggested.