Evans Cathryn E Y, Kemish Karen, Turnbull Oliver H
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, Wales LL57 2AS, UK.
Brain Cogn. 2004 Apr;54(3):240-4. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2004.02.022.
Suitable normative information on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is not currently available, though it is clear that there is great individual variability in performance on this assessment tool. Given that the task is presumed to measure the emotion-based learning systems that are thought to form the biological basis of 'intuition,' there is some reason to think that education (especially tertiary education) might explicitly de-emphasise the role of emotion-based learning in decision-making. This suggests the paradoxical finding that better-educated participants should show poorer performance on the IGT. We recruited 30 participants (all female, all aged 18-25) to participate in a 'real money' version of the IGT. There was no significant difference in performance in blocks 1-3 of the task (trials 1-60). However, there was a substantial effect of education on the final two blocks (trials 61-100), such that the less-well-educated participants produced twice as much of an improvement over baseline as did their university-educated colleagues. A range of possible explanations for this remarkable finding are discussed. The most likely appears to be that tertiary education specifically discourages the use of emotion-based learning systems in decision-making. These findings bear on the extent to which education has a role to play in our reliance on cognition and emotion in decision-making, including the likely role of education in the generation and maintenance of false beliefs.
目前尚无关于爱荷华赌博任务（IGT）的合适规范信息，不过很明显，在这个评估工具上的表现存在很大的个体差异。鉴于该任务被认为是用来测量基于情感的学习系统，而这些系统被认为构成了“直觉”的生物学基础，所以有理由认为教育（尤其是高等教育）可能会明确淡化基于情感的学习在决策中的作用。这就暗示了一个看似矛盾的发现，即受教育程度更高的参与者在IGT上的表现应该更差。我们招募了30名参与者（均为女性，年龄在18至25岁之间）来参与IGT的“真钱”版本。在任务的第1 - 3个板块（试验1 - 60次）中，表现没有显著差异。然而，教育对最后两个板块（试验61 - 100次）有显著影响，以至于受教育程度较低的参与者相较于接受过大学教育的同事，在基线水平上的改善程度是他们的两倍。文中讨论了对这一显著发现的一系列可能解释。最有可能的似乎是高等教育特别不鼓励在决策中使用基于情感的学习系统。这些发现关系到教育在我们决策过程中对认知和情感的依赖程度所起的作用，包括教育在错误信念的产生和维持中可能扮演的角色。
