Event-related potentials during visual selective attention in children of alcoholics

Event-related potentials were recorded from 7- to 18-year-old children of a lcoholics (COAs, n = 50) and age- and sex-matched control children (n = 50) while they performed a visual selective attention task. The task was to at tend selectively to stimuli with a specified color (red or blue) in an atte mpt to detect the occurrence of target stimuli. COAs manifested a smaller P 3b amplitude to attended-target stimuli over the parietal and occipital sca lp than did the controls. A more specific analysis indicated that both the attentional relevance and the target properties of the eliciting stimulus d etermined the observed P3b amplitude differences between COAs and controls. In contrast, no significant group differences were observed in attention-r elated earlier occurring event-related potential components, referred to as frontal selection positivity, selection negativity, and N2b. These results represent neurophysiological evidence that COAs suffer from deficits at a late (semantic) level of visual selective information processing that are u nlikely a consequence of deficits at earlier (sensory) levels of selective processing. The findings support the notion that a reduced visual P3b ampli tude in COAs represents a high-level processing dysfunction indicating thei r increased vulnerability to alcoholism.