Good Decks Research Articles

Decision-making patterns and sensitivity to reward and punishment in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Earlier studies have demonstrated that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with aberrant sensitivity to rewards and punishments. Although some studies have focused on real-life decision making in children with ADHD using the Iowa gambling task, the number of good deck choices, a frequently used index of decision-making ability in the gambling task, is insufficient for investigating the complex decision-making strategies in subjects. In the present study, we investigated decision-making strategies in ADHD children, analyzing T-patterns with rewards, with punishments, and without rewards and punishments during the gambling task, and examined the relationship between decision-making strategies and skin conductance responses (SCRs) to rewards and punishments. We hypothesized that ADHD children and normal children would employ different decision-making strategies depending on their sensitivity to rewards and punishments in the gambling task. Our results revealed that ADHD children had fewer T-patterns with punishments and exhibited a significant tendency to have many T-patterns with rewards, thus supporting our hypothesis. Moreover, in contrast to normal children, ADHD children failed to demonstrate differences between reward and punishment SCRs, supporting the idea that they had an aberrant sensitivity to rewards and punishments. Therefore, we concluded that ADHD children would be impaired in decision-making strategies depending on their aberrant sensitivity to rewards and punishments. However, we were unable to specify whether large reward SCRs or small punishment SCRs is generated in ADHD children.

Immediate gain is long-term loss: Are there foresighted decision makers in the Iowa Gambling Task?

BackgroundThe Somatic Marker Hypothesis suggests that normal subjects are "foreseeable" and ventromedial prefrontal patients are "myopic" in making decisions, as the behavior shown in the Iowa Gambling Task. The present study questions previous findings because of the existing confounding between long-term outcome (expected value, EV) and gain-loss frequency variables in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). A newly and symmetrically designed gamble, namely the Soochow Gambling Task (SGT), with a high-contrast EV between bad (A, B) and good (C, D) decks, is conducted to clarify the issue about IGT confounding. Based on the prediction of EV (a basic assumption of IGT), participants should prefer to choose good decks C and D rather than bad decks A and B in SGT. In contrast, according to the prediction of gain-loss frequency, subjects should prefer the decks A and B because they possessed relatively the high-frequency gain.MethodsThe present experiment was performed by 48 participants (24 males and 24 females). Most subjects are college students recruited from different schools. Each subject played the computer version SGT first and completed a questionnaire for identifying their final preference. The IGT experimental procedure was mostly followed to assure a similar condition of decision uncertainty.ResultsThe SGT experiment demonstrated that the prediction of gain-loss frequency is confirmed. Most subjects preferred to choose the bad decks A and B than good decks C and D. The learning curve and questionnaire data indicate that subjects can not "hunch" the EV throughout the game. Further analysis of the effect of previous choice demonstrated that immediate gain increases the probability to stay at the same deck.ConclusionSGT provides a balanced structure to clarify the confounding inside IGT and demonstrates that gain-loss frequency rather than EV guides decision makers in these high-ambiguity gambles. Additionally, the choice behavior is mostly following the "gain-stay, lose-randomize" strategy to cope with the uncertain situation. As demonstrated in SGT, immediate gain can bring about a long-term loss under uncertainty. This empirical result may explain some shortsighted behaviors in real life.

Does Autonomic Arousal Distinguish Good and Bad Decisions?

The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) proposes that physiological feedback to the brain influences cognitive appraisal and human decisions, however, the strength of evidence in support of the SMH is equivocal. We examined the validity of the SMH by measuring physiological arousal in a population of healthy individuals playing the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which is a computerized card game designed to assess real-life decisions. We also examined the influence of reinforcer type on IGT performance and physiological reactivity. Skin conductance level (SCL) reactivity was measured in 41 participants performing the IGT using either facsimile or real money. Participants were categorized as normal (i.e., nonimpaired) or impaired on the basis of their IGT performance, and differences in performance and physiological reactivity between groups were examined. No differences in SCL were found between normal and impaired groups. However, greater SCL rises were borderline significant when anticipating choices from bad decks compared with good decks, and a significantly greater SCL rise followed a reward from a bad deck. The effect of reinforcer type also revealed marginally greater performance when using facsimile money. This was corroborated physiologically by Deck × Reinforcer Type interactions, showing a marginally significant tendency for a greater SCL rise when anticipating a choice from a bad deck using facsimile but not real money, and a significantly greater SCL rise following a reward from a bad deck when using facsimile but not real money. Findings constrain the SMH, suggesting that autonomic activity may discriminate between good and bad decks (i.e., good vs. bad decision-making) by reflecting the magnitude of gains and losses, but is independent of long-term consequences and does not discriminate between overall good and bad performance (i.e., normal vs. impaired decision-makers).

Awareness and Symbol Use Improves Future-Oriented Decision Making in Preschoolers

A child version of the Iowa Gambling task was used to explore the development of decision-making during the preschool period in two experiments. One hundred eighty-one children, 3.5 and 4.5 years of age, were asked to choose between a bad deck with higher immediate but lower long-term rewards and a good deck with lower immediate but higher long-term rewards. Experiment 1 explored age differences and the association of the gambling task with a delay of gratification task. Age differences in performance were found, supporting previous findings (Kerr & Zelazo, 2004) of a development difference between 3- and 4-year-old children in future-oriented decision making. Performance on the gambling task was found to be significantly associated with delay of gratification for 3.5-year-old children only. Experiment 2 explored the effect of labeling and symbol use on performance. Although having 4.5-year-old children label decks as good or bad improved their performance on the task, this labeling had no effect on 3.5-year-old childrens performance. However, having 3.5-year-old children place a symbol representing good and bad next to the decks did improve performance, but only for those children who were able to correctly label the decks. These results suggest an interaction between conscious awareness, symbol use, and making advantageous future-oriented decisions during the preschool period.

Affective guidance in the Iowa gambling task

It has been suggested that affective states can guide higher level cognitive processes and that such affective guidance may be particularly important when real-life decisions are made under uncertainty. We ask whether affect guides decisions in a laboratory task that models real-life decisions under uncertainty. In the Iowa gambling task (IGT), participants search for monetary payoffs in an uncertain environment. Recent evidence against an affective guidance interpretation of the IGT indicates a need to set a standard for what counts as evidence of affective guidance. We present a novel analysis of IGT, and our results show that participants' galvanic skin response (GSR) reflects an affective process that precedes and guides cognition. Specifically, prior to participants' knowledge of the optimal strategy, their GSRs are significantly higher when they are about to select from a bad deck, relative to a good deck, and this difference in GSR is correlated with a behavioral preference for the good deck.

Decision-making and addiction (part II): myopia for the future or hypersensitivity to reward?

On a decision-making instrument known as the “gambling task” (GT), a subgroup of substance dependent individuals (SDI) opted for choices that yield high immediate gains in spite of higher future losses. This resembles the behavior of patients with ventromedial (VM) prefrontal cortex lesions. In this study, we addressed the possibility that hypersensitivity to reward may account for the “myopia” for the future in this subgroup of SDI. We used a variant version of the GT, in which the good decks yielded high immediate punishment but higher delayed reward. The bad decks yielded low immediate punishment and lower delayed reward. We measured the skin conductance response (SCR) of subjects after receiving reward (reward SCR) and during their pondering from which deck to choose (anticipatory SCR). A subgroup of SDI who was not impaired on the original GT performed normally on the variant GT. The subgroup of SDI who was impaired on the original GT showed two levels of performance on the variant GT. One subgroup (36% of the sample) performed poorly on the variant GT, and showed similar behavioral and physiological impairments to VM patients. The other subgroup of SDI (64% of the sample) performed normally on the variant task, but had abnormally large physiological responses to reward, i.e. large SCR after receiving reward (reward SCR) and large SCR in anticipation of outcomes that yield large reward. Thus, the combined cognitive and physiological approach of assessing decision-making characterizes three sub-populations of SDI. One sub-population is without impairments that can be detected by any measure of the GT paradigm. Another sub-population is similar to VM patients in that they are insensitive to the future, both positive and negative. A third sub-population is hypersensitive to reward, so that the presence or the prospect of receiving, reward dominates their behavior.

Audio Analysis VII: Digital Copying of Compact Disks

The Sony PCM-601 Digital Audio Processor turns digital audio signals into a video signal and vice versa. It has analog and digital audio inputs and outputs. Because of its modest $1400 retail price and specifications that are similar to professional units, it is often used to record master tapes used to make compact disks (CDs). Its digital input and a VHS videocassette recorder's (VCR) 6-hr recording time make it appear to be an attractive device for copying CDs. Suppose that one is a serious recording collector with a library of 2000 CDs and wishes to record them onto tape for one of the following reasons: (1) one wants a backup copy in case the CD is lost or damaged, (2) one wants to play a copy of the CD in a different location, such as an automobile. The easiest solution for a wealthy collector is to buy another set of 2000 CDs (costing about $30,000). Dubbing the CDs onto analog cassette tape is time-consuming and tedious. It involves setting recording levels, bias, and equalization but is fairly inexpensive (about $400 for a good cassette deck and $4000 for 2000 tapes). Naturally, the cassette deck introduces some distortion. With each cas-