Thus, alcohol has been shown to impair both conflict monitoring (under some conditions) and post-error performance adjustment. Might these effects emerge only once control has already failed? Close inspection of the sequential trial RT data reported by both Ridderinkhof et al. (2002) and Bartholow et al. (2012) suggests that, whereas alcohol has a pronounced effect on the post-error CE relative to placebo, alcohol does not affect the magnitude of the CE following correct responses. This pattern suggests that alcohol might primarily impair conflict monitoring once control has failed, leading to disruption of downstream regulative control processes thought to rely on conflict detection to signal the need to adjust. According to theory (e.g., Botvinick, 2007), control failures (i.e., errors) during response conflict tasks often indicate that conflict was not sufficiently registered and overcome prior to the response, and instead is registered by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) at the time of the response (also see Yeung et al., 2004). This conflict-related ACC response is believed to signal other areas of prefrontal cortex that an increase in control is needed so as
