magnitude of the outcome. In a similar vein, the positive component analogous to P3, was found to be sensitive to both the quality (loss/gain) and quantity (larger/smaller) of the outcomes (Toyomaki and Murohashi, 2005; Kamarajan et al., 2009), which is very distinct from the generic P3 component observed in stimulus discrimination tasks. Although the ORN and ORP components may share common features of signal processing as indexed by N2 and P3 respectively, they indicate very specific levels of signal processing during outcome evaluation. Therefore, it is suggested that the dysfunctional outcome processing, as evidenced by decreased ORN and ORP amplitudes in alcoholics, could be due to a combination of generic signal processing deficits and a specific dysfunction in evaluative processing. Thus, the decreased amplitude observed in alcoholics in the earlier negative component (ORN) and in the later positive component (ORP) may indicate neurocognitive dysfunctions in both early detection of different outcomes and subsequent evaluation of quality (loss vs. gain) and quantity (10 vs. 50) of outcomes.
