The current finding that alcohol reduced the CE in the amplitude of the N2 might seem inconsistent with previous reports showing no effect of alcohol on N2 amplitude (Easdon et al., 2005; Ridderinkhof et al., 2002; Rohrbaugh et al., 1987). However, those prior reports are perfectly in-line with the current finding that alcohol has no effect on conflict monitoring on trials that follow correct responses. Given that the majority of the trials in any dataset like this will represent neural activity following correct responses, and that none of those prior studies (or, for that matter, any prior studies of alcohol effects on ERPs) examined neural responses separately as a function of previous trial accuracy, it is not surprising that previous work has failed to find effects of alcohol on N2 amplitude.
