The current findings support the earlier results of lack of N4 attenuation to primed words and/or inability to differentiate between the primed and unprimed words in alcoholics (Ji et al., 1999; Porjesz et al., 2002). However, as the earlier studies were conducted on alcoholic subjects, and the current study was conducted on subjects who are at HR to develop alcoholism, this suggests that the deficits were already present before the development of alcoholism. This indicates that similar to alcoholics, the HR subjects have deficits in semantic strategies especially in semantic expectancy and post-lexical semantic processing. These deficits in young male nonalcoholic offspring of alcoholics may represent an electrophysiological endophenotype that characterizes a genetic vulnerability to develop alcoholism and cognitive impairments. Follow up studies with this paradigm are underway in adolescents and young adults as part of the COGA prospective study.
