Dual conception of risk in the Iowa Gambling Task: effects of sleep deprivation and test-retest gap

Abstract

Risk in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is often understood in terms of intertemporal choices, i.e., preference for immediate outcomes in favor of delayed outcomes is considered risky decision making. According to behavioral economics, healthy decision makers are expected to refrain from choosing the short-sighted immediate gain because, over time (10 trials of the IGT), the immediate gains result in a long term loss (net loss). Instead decision makers are expected to maximize their gains by choosing options that, over time (10 trials), result in delayed or long term gains (net gain). However, task choices are sometimes made on the basis of the frequency of reward and punishment such that frequent rewards/infrequent punishments are favored over infrequent rewards/frequent punishments. The presence of these two attributes (intertemporality and frequency of reward) in IGT decision making may correspond to the emotion-cognition dichotomy and reflect a dual conception of risk. Decision making on the basis of the two attributes was tested under two conditions: delay in retest and sleep deprivation. An interaction between sleep deprivation and time delay was expected to attenuate the difference between the two attributes. Participants were 40 male university students. Analysis of the effects of IGT attribute type (intertemporal vs. frequency of reinforcement), sleep deprivation (sleep deprivation vs. no sleep deprivation), and test-retest gap (short vs. long delay) showed a significant within-subjects effect of IGT attribute type thus confirming the difference between the two attributes. Sleep deprivation had no effect on the attributes, but test-retest gap and the three-way interaction between attribute type, test-retest gap, and sleep deprivation were significantly different. Post-hoc tests revealed that sleep deprivation and short test-retest gap attenuated the difference between the two attributes. Furthermore, the results showed an expected trend of increase in intertemporal decision making at retest suggesting that intertemporal decision making benefited from repeated task exposure. The present findings add to understanding of the emotion-cognition dichotomy. Further, they show an important time-dependent effect of a universally experienced constraint (sleep deprivation) on decision making. It is concluded that risky decision making in the IGT is contingent on the attribute under consideration and is affected by factors such as time elapsed and constraint experienced before the retest.

Enchanted by Your Surrounding? Measuring the Effects of Immersion and Design of Virtual Environments on Decision-Making

“…Both advantageous decks lead to the same total profit and both disadvantageous decks lead to the same total loss as displayed in Table 2. This leads to a conception of risk in the form of intertemporality (Singh, 2013). However, with regard to the frequency of immediate reward and punishment, decks A and C could be perceived as more risky whereas decks B and D could be perceived as safe (Singh, 2013).…”

“…This leads to a conception of risk in the form of intertemporality (Singh, 2013). However, with regard to the frequency of immediate reward and punishment, decks A and C could be perceived as more risky whereas decks B and D could be perceived as safe (Singh, 2013). Decks A and C feature a high frequency of small losses.…”

“…In addition, research demonstrated that healthy participants with a higher risk attitude purposefully draw cards from more risky decks (Singh and Khan, 2008). This results in a dichotomy of cognitionemotion in IGT decision-making (Kahneman and Frederick, 2007;Singh, 2013). Therefore, while emotions have been shown to constantly influence IGT decision-making (Heilman et al, 2010), they are not the only factor contributing to a subject's behavior on the task (Dunn et al, 2006).…”

“…Splitting the results in segments of 20 draws each further allows for an analysis of a subject's selection patterns (Bowman et al, 2005;Bechara et al, 2002;van den Bos et al, 2006). However, due to the dual conception of risk, the IGT results can also be scored according to frequency of preference for immediate reinforcement, i.e., (B + D)-(A + C) (Singh, 2013).…”

Role of Cortisol and Testosterone in Risky Decision-Making: Deciphering Male Decision-Making in the Iowa Gambling Task

“…Despite the limitations, and the exploratory nature of the study, cortisol regulation and testosterone interaction explained 25% of the decision-making variation in the risk phase. Studies using hierarchical regression for IGT performance explain a modest proportion of IGT decision-making because IGT is a complex task with considerable heterogeneity (large standard deviations; Bowman and Turnbull, 2003 ; Newman et al, 2008 ; Singh and Khan, 2009 ; Singh, 2013a , b ). For example, measures of emotional and cognitive intelligence explained 12% of IGT choices (adjusted R 2 = 0.12; Ramchandran et al, 2020 ), personality explained 10% of the IGT choices ( R 2 = 0.10 for males and 0.05 for females; Hooper et al, 2008 ), and heart rate explained 19% of male IGT decision-making in the risk phase ( Wemm and Wulfert, 2017 ).…”