Abstract
The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is based on the assumption that a decision maker is equally motivated to seek reward and avoid punishment, and that decision making is governed solely by the intertemporal attribute (i.e., preference for an option that produces an immediate outcome instead of one that yields a delayed outcome is believed to reflect risky decision making and is considered a deficit). It was assumed in the present study that the emotion- and cognition-based processing dichotomy manifests in the IGT as reward and punishment frequency and the intertemporal attribute. It was further proposed that the delineation of emotion- and cognition-based processing is contingent upon reward and punishment as manifested in the frame of the task (variant type) and task motivation (instruction type). The effects of IGT variant type (reward vs. punishment) and instruction type (task motivation induced by instruction types: reward, punishment, reward and punishment, or no hint) on the intertemporal and frequency attributes of IGT decision-making were analyzed. Decision making in the reward variant was equally governed by both attributes, and significantly affected by instruction type, while decision making in the punishment variant was differentially affected by the two attributes and not significantly impacted by instruction type. These results suggest that reward and punishment manifested via task frame as well as the task motivation may facilitate the differentiation of emotion- and cognition-based processing in the IGT.
Highlights
The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara et al, 1994) is widely used to examine the interaction of emotion and cognition in foresighted decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty
The four decks differ in two ways: (a) the net outcome across time, whereby decks A and B are poor long-term choices and decks C and D are safe long-term choices; and (b) the frequency of immediate reward and punishment irrespective of net or long-term outcomes, whereby decks A and C could be perceived as poor choices due to frequent punishments/infrequent rewards and decks B and D could be perceived as safe choices due to infrequent punishments/frequent rewards
The study examined the effects of task motivation and IGT variant framing on the two attributes of decision making in the IGT
Summary
The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara et al, 1994) is widely used to examine the interaction of emotion and cognition in foresighted decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty. It is proposed that the frame of the IGT variant and the task motivation toward reward and punishment might influence the differentiation of emotion-cognition-based processing. It has been suggested that the unidirectional instructions (i.e., only to seek reward or to avoid punishment) are less taxing on working memory; this results in more efficient cognition-based processing, and increases intertemporal decision making (Singh and Khan, 2012). In the present study, it is explored whether varying the reward and punishment frame via variant and/or instruction type affects the emotion-cognition dichotomy, as tested via the two attributes in IGT decision making. It was hypothesized that IGT variant type and task instruction type would influence which attribute governed IGT decision-making
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