It is not clear whether alcoholic emotional processing effects are present before chronic alcohol consumption, reflecting a vulnerability factor, or whether they result from excessive alcohol consumption. It is also unclear whether and to what extent these effects persist in long-term abstinent alcoholics (LTAA) (> 6 months sobriety). One longitudinal study of short-term abstinent alcoholics showed no improvement in EFE decoding (Foisy et al., 2007b), consistent with Kornreich et al.’s (2001) cross-sectional study in LTAA (2 months – 9 years), but the latter study did find a normalization of EFE intensity ratings.
