Neuropsychological deficits in female adolescents with a substance use disorder: Better accounted for by conduct disorder?

Objective: To determine whether neuropsychological deficits in female adolescents are more closely related to a diagnosis of a substance use disorder (SUD) or a conduct disorder (CD). Method: Subjects were 470 female adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 years. They were categorized into one of four groups: (1) SUD-only (n =63), (2) CD-only (n = 58), (3) SUD+CD (n = 239) and (4) normal control (n = 110). The groups were compared on multiple neuropsychological measures covering four cognitive domains: general intelligence, executive functioning, language competence and academic achievement. Results: The findings were consistent across ail measures. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed significant group differences for all four neuropsychological domains. Univariate tests indicated that the two CD groups equally exhibited the poorest performance of all four groups on nearly all measures of intelligence, executive functioning, language competence and academic achievement. The SUD-only soup performed better than thr two CD groups but not as well as the control group. Socioeconomic status and chronological age were statistically controlled for in all analyses. Conclusions: These data suggest that the neuropsychological deficits found in our sample of female adolescents with SUD are more closely related to CD, or antisociality in general, than to SUD. Future studies assessing the neuropsychological functioning of persons with SUD should make efforts to measure comorbid antisociality.