It's All in How You Think About It: Construal Level and the Iowa Gambling Task

Contextual Factors Affecting Risky Decision Making: The Influence of Music on Task Performance and Perceived Distraction

Previous research has investigated factors that contribute to the development of different risk-taking behaviors, such as can occur on lab-based behavioral risky decision making tasks. On several of the most common tasks, participants must develop an adequate understanding of the relative risks and benefits associated with each decision in order to learn to decide advantageously. However, contextual factors can affect the decision making process and one's ability to weigh the risks and benefits of a decision. The present study investigates the extent to which music may be an additional contextual factor that can disrupt decision making and other executive functions. Across four studies we examine whether having music playing passively in the background or having participants actively listen to music affects performance on measures of risky decision making, working memory, processing speed, and problem solving. Participants reported greater distraction for rock music than classical music in the passive listening studies but did not report any differences in distraction across conditions in the active listening studies. Despite this self-reported increased level of distraction, few significant differences were found in task performance across groups and across studies. The Angling Risk Task (ART) was sensitive to differences in risk by condition, with music leading to greater risk-taking in a passive listening study, but less risk-taking in an active listening study, compared to no music. The extent to which music serves as a contextual factor disrupting performance on measures of risky decision making and other executive functions may depend in part on whether individuals are actively versus passively listening to the music.

Recollecting Cross-Cultural Evidences: Are Decision Makers Really Foresighted in Iowa Gambling Task?

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has become a remarkable experimental paradigm of dynamic emotion decision making. In recent years, research has emphasized the "prominent deck B (PDB) phenomenon" among normal (control group) participants, in which they favor "bad" deck B with its high-frequency gain structure-a finding that is incongruent with the original IGT hypothesis concerning foresightedness. Some studies have attributed such performance inconsistencies to cultural differences. In the present review, 86 studies featuring data on individual deck selections were drawn from an initial sample of 958 IGT-related studies published from 1994 to 2017 for further investigation. The PDB phenomenon was found in 67.44% of the studies (58 of 86), and most participants were recorded as having adopted the "gain-stay loss-randomize" strategy to cope with uncertainty. Notably, participants in our sample of studies originated from 16 areas across North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia, and the findings suggest that the PDB phenomenon may be cross-cultural.

Functional Cerebral Specialization and Decision Making in the Iowa Gambling Task: A Single-Case Study of Left-Hemispheric Atrophy and Hemispherotomy

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a decision-making task that preferentially involves the right prefrontal cortex (PFC). However, the performance of the task is driven by two attributes: intertemporal (long vs. short-term) and frequency-based processing of rewards-punishments, and differs over the two phases of uncertainty (early trials) and risk (later trials). Although intertemporal decision making involves the right PFC, the extent of hemispheric specialization in attribute and phase-specific decision making is unknown. Therefore, the current study assessed decision making in a patient with a uni-hemispheric disease, who underwent hemispherotomy surgery, comparing pre-surgical IGT performance (3 days prior to surgery) with post-surgical performance (1 month, and 12 months post-surgery). The patient’s pre- and post-surgical IGT performances were analyzed to examine changes in attribute and phase-specific decision making, including the widely reported deck B phenomenon. The results for the two attributes of deck selection at the pre- and post-surgical assessments suggested marked changes in the two IGT phases of risk and uncertainty. Pre-surgery, the patient made more intertemporally disadvantageous choices, and task-progression contributed to it; within 1 month of surgery, intertemporal disadvantageous deck choices were contingent on task progression, after 1 year, disadvantageous choices were independent of task progression. Intertemporal attribute alteration was unresponsive to uncertainty and risk phase. The effect of task progression on frequency attribute remained unchanged before and immediately after the surgery, and preference for infrequent decks was observed only after 1 year. Further, pre and post surgery alteration in frequency attribute was phase-specific: within 1 month of surgery, infrequent deck choices decreased in uncertainty and increased in risk, whereas the reverse was observed after 12 months. Deck B choice increase was in the uncertainty phase. Results are discussed in reference to valence-linked hemispheric specialization and its potential role in attribute and phase-specific IGT decision making.

Country and Sex Differences in Decision Making Under Uncertainty and Risk

Whether males and females differ in decision-making remains highly debatable. However, a male advantage in decision making is observed in animal as well as human models of the iowa gambling task (IGT), and, in case of the latter, the difference is observed across a wide range of age groups. It is unclear if these sex differences on the IGT are malleable to environmental influences such as sociocultural factors. We tested sex differences during the uncertainty and risk phases of the IGT in data pooled from three countries that reflected high, moderate, to low gender-equity (Germany, United States, and India: N = 531, female = 269). Comparing the net scores in uncertainty vs. risk blocks (first two vs. last two blocks) confirmed the male-advantage on the IGT across the three countries, specifically in the risk blocks, with the highest male-advantage observed for Germany. Results are discussed in terms of sex differences in reaction to uncertainty vs. risk, and the counter-intuitive effect of gender-equitable environment suggesting that national/environmental factors might influence advantageous decision making, but in ways that accentuate rather than abate sex differences.

Social distance modulates the process of uncertain decision-making: evidence from event-related potentials

Purpose

Social distance affects risk perception in uncertain decision-making, but how this effect works and the mechanism of how social distance influences the early processing stages of uncertain decision-making are still unclear. This investigation aimed to explore how social distance influences risk-taking during uncertain decision-making using the Iowa Gambling Task with recording of event-related potentials.

Methods

A total of 57 healthy subjects (36 female) participated in the modified single-choice Iowa Gambling Task when they gambled based on three quantified social distances (self, friend, and stranger). The social distance between participant and beneficiary was quantified on a scale of 0–100 points, with 0 representing self, 5 representing a close friend, and 100 representing a stranger.

Results

Three stages of uncertain decision-making were analyzed. Behavioral results showed that social distance worked interactively with choice frame, and high social distance made people choose a more advantageous deck and a less disadvantageous deck than low social distance. The P300 in the choice-evaluation stage, which reflects stimulus discrimination, directly proved this result by showing that gambling for a stranger caused higher P300 when evaluating an advantageous deck and lower P300 when evaluating a disadvantageous deck than for others. Decision preceding negativity in the response-selection stage represents the anticipation of risky choices: this was larger with high social distance when choosing a disadvantageous deck. Feedback-related negativity and feedback-related P300 had motivational significance, showing smaller amplitudes when gambling for a stranger than for oneself.

Conclusion

These results provide evidence that social distance works interactively with choice frames of uncertain decision-making. People at high social distance are more risk-taking in an advantageous frame and more risk-avoid ant in a disadvantageous frame.

The Use of Problem-Solving Therapy for Primary Care to Enhance Complex Decision-Making in Healthy Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Some older adults who are cognitively healthy have been found to make poor decisions. The vulnerability of such older adults has been postulated to be the result of disproportionate aging of the frontal lobes that contributes to a decline in executive functioning abilities among some older adults. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether decision-making performance in older adults can be enhanced by a psychoeducational intervention. Twenty cognitively and emotionally intact persons aged 65 years and older were recruited and randomized into two conditions: psychoeducational condition [Problem-Solving Therapy for Primary Care (PST-PC)] and no-treatment Control group. Participants in the psychoeducational condition each received four 45-min sessions of PST-PC across a 2-week period. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) was administered as the outcome measure to the treatment group, while participants in the Control group completed the IGT without intervention. A significant interaction effect was observed between group status and the trajectory of score differences across trials on the IGT. Particularly, as the task progressed to the last 20% of trials, participants in the PST-PC group significantly outperformed participants in the Control group in terms of making more advantageous decisions. These findings demonstrated that a four-session problem-solving therapy can reinforce aspects of executive functioning (that may have declined as a part of healthy aging), thereby enhancing complex decision-making in healthy older adults.

Adaptation and validation of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire to Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract Introduction: Decision making (DM) is among the most important abilities for everyday functioning. However, the most widely used measures of DM come from behavioral paradigms, whose ecological validity and standalone use has been criticized in the literature. Though these issues could be addressed by the use of DM questionnaires as a complementary assessment method, no such instruments have been validated for use in Brazilian Portuguese. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conduct the translation and validation of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (MDMQ) for use in a Brazilian population. Methods: The adaptation of the MDMQ involved the following steps: translation, back-translation, expert review and pilot study. These steps were followed by factor analysis and internal consistency measurements, which led to the exclusion of 4 items from the scale. The 18-item version of the MDMQ was then administered to a validation sample consisting of healthy adults, as well as patients with bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Results: The instrument displayed good internal consistency, with the hypervigilance subscale showing the lowest, though still acceptable, Cronbach's alpha value. Its factor structure was comparable to that of the original MDMQ according to confirmatory factor analysis. Nevertheless, the MDMQ was sensitive to both depression severity and the presence of MDD and BD, both of which are known to have an impact on DM ability. Conclusion: The version of the MDMQ produced in the present study may be an important addition to neuropsychological assessment batteries with a focus on DM and related abilities