In particular, this study was designed to test two primary hypothesized mechanisms for alcohol’s effects on evaluative cognitive control and behavioral adjustment, the first being that alcohol limits error detection. This hypothesis was tested by including a self-report measure of overt error recognition and by measuring the Pe component of the ERP, theorized to reflect awareness of errors (Hester et al., 2005; Nieuwenhuis et al., 2001). The current data provided some limited evidence that alcohol might limit error awareness. Specifically, although the behavioral error recognition data indicated that alcohol did not limit awareness of incorrect responses, alcohol did reduce the amplitude of the Pe. These findings suggest that alcohol might limit awareness of errors at an immediate, automatic level but that subsequent processes leading to overt recognition, perhaps associated with further reflection on the response outcome, are not impaired by alcohol. In any case, however, there was no evidence here that either Pe amplitude or overt error recognition were related to posterror behavioral adjustment. Thus, even if alcohol can be said to limit error awareness to some extent, this process appears not to be responsible for alcohol’s self-regulatory impairment.
