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Mismatch Negativity in Young Children of Alcoholics from High‐Density Families
Author(s) -
Holguín Socorro Rodríguez,
Corral Montserrat,
Cadaveira Fernando
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
alcoholism: clinical and experimental research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 153
eISSN - 1530-0277
pISSN - 0145-6008
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-0277.1998.tb03920.x
Subject(s) - mismatch negativity , dichotic listening , audiology , event related potential , psychology , oddball paradigm , electroencephalography , developmental psychology , negativity effect , neuroscience , medicine
The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event‐related potentials was recorded from a group of young children of alcoholics ( n = 19, 8 females) with a high‐density family history of alcoholism and from a control group ( n = 23,12 females), between 8 and 15 years of age. A dichotic listening task was used, and subjects had to pay attention to an oddball paradigm in one ear and ignore the stimuli in the other ear. The event‐related potentials elicited by the standard unattended tones were subtracted from those elicited by the infrequent deviant unattended tones, and the MMN was measured at 10 frontal and central electrodes. No group differences were observed in peak latency, peak amplitude, and mean amplitude of the MMN. These results indicated that preattentive mechanisms of mismatch detection were not impaired in young subjects at high risk for alcoholism. Results are discussed in relation to differences in electro‐physiological indexes of automatic versus controlled information processing and in relation to the characteristics of the sample.