The central finding of this study was that, compared to non-substance-abusing controls, there was no reduction of P3b amplitude in treatment-naïve actively drinking adolescents with alcohol dependence, but without other substance use or psychiatric comorbidity. This finding is consistent with our a priori predictions, which were made for two primary reasons. First, treatment-naïve individuals with AUDs tend to have less severe alcoholism, lower family history density of alcohol problems, and less psychiatric and polysubstance comorbidity than their treatment-seeking counterparts (Di Sclafani et al., 2008; Fein and Landman, 2005). Previous research demonstrating the P3b reduction has, by and large, used participants from treatment-seeking or treated populations.
