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Internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the P3 event‐related potential (ERP) elicited by alcoholic and non‐alcoholic beverage pictures
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the P3 event‐related potential (ERP) elicited by alcoholic and non‐alcoholic beverage pictures

Roberto U. Cofresí, Thomas M. Piasecki, Greg Hajcak and Bruce D. Bartholow
Psychophysiology, Vol.59(2), pp.e13967-n/a
02/2022
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13967
PMCID: PMC8724465
PMID: 34783024
url
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/8724465View
Open Access

Abstract

Addiction researchers are interested in the ability of neural signals, like the P3 component of the ERP, to index individual differences in liability factors like motivational reactivity to alcohol/drug cues. The reliability of these measures directly impacts their ability to index individual differences, yet little attention has been paid to their psychometric properties. The present study fills this gap by examining within‐session internal consistency reliability (ICR) and between‐session test–retest reliability (TRR) of the P3 amplitude elicited by images of alcoholic beverages (Alcohol Cue P3) and non‐alcoholic drinks (NADrink Cue P3) as well as the difference between them, which isolates alcohol cue‐specific reactivity in the P3 (ACR‐P3). Analyses drew on data from a large sample of alcohol‐experienced emerging adults (session 1 N = 211, 55% female, aged 18–20 yr; session 2 N = 98, 66% female, aged 19–21 yr). Evaluated against domain‐general thresholds, ICR was excellent (M ± SD; r= 0.902 ± 0.030) and TRR was fair (r = 0.706 ± 0.020) for Alcohol Cue P3 and NADrink Cue P3, whereas for ACR‐P3, ICR and TRR were poor (r = 0.370 ± 0.071; r = 0.201 ± 0.042). These findings indicate that individual differences in the P3 elicited by cues for ingested liquid rewards are highly reliable and substantially stable over 8–10 months. Individual differences in alcohol cue‐specific P3 reactivity were less reliable and less stable. The conditions under which alcohol/drug cue‐specific reactivity in neural signals is adequately reliable and stable remain to be discovered. P3/LPP responses to alcohol/drug cues are increasingly used as measures of individual differences in incentive salience attribution propensity, but limited attention has been paid to their psychometric properties. We provide evidence that alcohol and non‐alcohol reward cue‐elicited P3 responses, but not the difference between them, capture highly reliable and stable between‐person variation. More work is needed to obtain psychometrically sound measures of addiction‐specific between‐person variation in the alcohol/drug cue‐elicited P3/LPP.
addiction alcohol/alcoholism ERPs individual differences P300/LPP

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