Other considerations in alcoholics’ responses to emotional materials are length of sobriety and drinking history. For example, Kornreich et al (2001) found that recently detoxified alcoholics (three weeks of sobriety) made significantly more errors in identifying emotional facial expressions and overestimated the intensity of facial expressiveness than did either longer term recovered alcoholics (two months or more) or normal controls. Decoding accuracy and intensity evaluations varied with different affects depicted. Expressions of anger and disgust resulted in sustained error judgments. Additionally, Harding et al (1996) noted a positive correlation between the degree of brain atrophy and the rate and amount of alcohol consumed over a lifetime.
