| Solvent abuse constitutes a major health concern in all ethnic groups because of its serious social, medical, and neuropsychological consequences. The present study examined the neuropsychological consequences of long-term solvent use on young Aboriginal males in Northwestern Ontario. It was hypothesized that solvent abusers would score below controls in a variety of neuropsychological measures, with the largest deficits in working memory. The researcher recruited 10 solvent abusers, aged from 18-25. As a comparison control group, this study unsuccessfully attempted to recruit 20 age-and-ethnically matched Aboriginal males without a history of solvent use. The literature suggests that this effect may have been due to the application of a culturally insensitive research methodology with this particular population (Smith, 1999; Steinhauer, 2002). Due to lack of control data, experimental data were compared to normative data drawn from the literature.;Covariates were not significantly correlated with test measures. Solvent abusers (N = 10) did not differ significantly from control data in measures of working memory, attention span, fine motor skills, or executive functioning capabilities. TONI-3 data correlated with sub-measures in the Connors Continuous Performance Test indicating a relationship with cognitive processing speed. Experimental TONI IQ did not differ significantly from Moland's (2004) solvent abuse group TONI IQ, indicating a relationship between IQ and solvent use, however, the directionality or structure of this relationship is unknown.;The study examined the areas of working memory, attention span, fine motor skills and executive functioning capabilities of solvent users. Covariates were measures of cognitive function, anxiety and depression. |
