We report here that, while LR subjects showed significant N4 attenuation for the primed condition compared to the unprimed condition, this was not observed in HR offspring of alcoholics (Figure 2 & 4). This clear differentiation in the processing of primed and unprimed words demonstrates the priming effect in low risk subjects and the lack of the priming effect in high risk subjects. These results are similar to results obtained for adult male alcoholics using the same paradigm in our laboratory (Porjesz et al., 2002). This demonstrates that risk for alcoholism is associated with lack of N4 attenuation and priming effect. While the HR and LR groups were significantly different for the primed condition, in the unprimed condition, there was no significant difference between the two groups in N4 amplitude (Figure 3 & 4a).
