Theorists have hypothesized that alcoholism, antisocial behavior, and childhood hyperactivity are part of a spectrum of disorders that have a common etiologic component, i.e., neuropsychological deficits to the structures (limbic system, frontal lobes) which regulate impulses. To examine the similarities in neuropsychological deficits between alcoholics and antisocial psychiatric patients, 31 alcoholic inpatients completed a battery of neuropsychological tests consisting of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, a sequential matching memory task, and the Necker Cube. Data from a group of 43 psychiatric patients, and from 18 college student controls, who were subjects from a previous study, were included. The psychiatric patients were divided into an antisocial group, and a non-antisocial control group. Comparisons of the pattern of cognitive-perceptual performance of the four groups showed that the alcoholics and the antisocial group differed significantly from the non-antisocial control group and from the college students, but did not differ significantly from one another. When separated by age, the younger alcoholics differed significantly from the non-antisocial control group and from the college students, but did not differ from the antisocial group or from the older alcoholics. The findings suggest that antisocial psychiatric patients and alcoholics are characterized by similar frontal lobe deficits. The fact that older and younger alcoholics had the same degree of deficit on the measures used suggests that the deficits may be antecedent. (BL)