Our primary finding is that LTAA compared to NAC have delayed RTs and delayed early ERP component latencies to EFE stimuli. Alcoholics in early abstinence, when evaluating EFE, have been shown to mislabel emotions, overrate their intensity, and respond more slowly (as in the current study, evident in both RTs and ERPs (Maurage et al., 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). Our results show that the slowing in alcoholics is present after multi-year abstinence. Analysis of covariance indicates that the P160 latency delay is independent of the observed RT delay and of much larger magnitude (about 5 times as large). In addition, in the gender identification task, there were no RT group differences while P160 latency effects were of comparable size to those in the identify emotion task, providing additional evidence that the P160 latency effect is dissociable from the RT delays observed.
