Priming deficits are not limited to semantic stimuli. The visual memory potential (VMP), occurring about 240 msec after a stimulus, is elicited in visual matching tasks using pictures of faces or objects, or shapes. In nonalcoholics, primed or matching stimuli elicit smaller and faster VMP’s than do nonmatching stimuli. In contrast, alcoholics manifest similar VMP’s to both matching and nonmatching stimuli in terms of both amplitude and latency. These results suggest that alcoholics do not use available information about the physical features of stimuli to facilitate or prime their responses to identical stimuli (Porjesz and Begleiter 1994).
