Davis Caroline, Fox John, Patte Karen, Curtis Claire, Strimas Rachel, Reid Caroline, McCool Catherine
Faculty of Health Sciences, York University, Toronto, Canada.
J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2008 Nov;14(6):1063-8. doi: 10.1017/S1355617708081204.
The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is the major plank of behavioral support for the Somatic Marker Hypothesis--a prominent theory of emotionally-based decision making. Despite its widespread use, some have questioned the ecological and discriminative validity of the IGT because a substantial proportion of neurologically-normal adults display a response pattern indistinguishable from those with ventromedial prefrontal cortical brain lesions. In a large sample of healthy adults, we examined the statistical influence of several demographic variables on two versions of the IGT, with the specific prediction that educational attainment would moderate learning across trials. Results confirmed a highly significant effect of education. On the commonly used original version of the IGT, performance tended to improve more rapidly, and reach a higher eventual positive score, as the level of education increased. Age and gender were nonsignificant effects in the model, and Caucasians had slightly better IGT performance than their non-Caucasian counterparts. Conclusions are that education level, among neurologically-normal adults, should be treated as a stratification or matching variable in case-control research using this task.
爱荷华赌博任务（IGT）是躯体标记假说行为支持的主要内容——这是一种基于情感的决策制定的重要理论。尽管它被广泛使用，但一些人质疑IGT的生态效度和区分效度，因为相当一部分神经功能正常的成年人表现出与腹内侧前额叶皮质脑损伤患者难以区分的反应模式。在一大群健康成年人中，我们研究了几个人口统计学变量对两个版本IGT的统计影响，具体预测是受教育程度会调节各试验中的学习情况。结果证实了教育的高度显著影响。在常用的IGT原始版本中，随着教育水平的提高，表现往往改善得更快，最终达到更高的正向分数。年龄和性别在模型中没有显著影响，白种人的IGT表现略优于非白种人。结论是，在使用该任务的病例对照研究中，神经功能正常的成年人的教育水平应被视为一个分层或匹配变量。
