The goal of the current study was to clarify alcohol’s effects on cognitive control by determining whether impairment of two crucial components of adaptive functioning—conflict monitoring and performance adjustment—is limited to situations in which control failures have occurred. Better understanding of alcohol’s acute effects on these basic cognitive processes and their neural underpinnings has the potential to inform interventions aimed at curbing a number of problem behaviors, including so-called “loss-of-control” drinking (e.g., Field et al., 2010; see also de Wit, 1996) and risk-related decisions in a number of domains (e.g., Giancola, 2000; Fromme et al., 1997; MacDonald et al., 1995, 1996). We predicted that conflict monitoring and performance adjustment would be disrupted by alcohol on trials following an error (i.e., when control has failed), but not on trials following correct responses (i.e., when control was adequate). We hypothesized that alcohol’s impairment of these processes can be characterized in terms of delayed recovery of control, and predicted that the alcohol group would show neural evidence of resumed conflict monitoring and performance adjustment two trials after an error.
