Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15213, USA.
Behav Brain Funct. 2009 Jan 2;5:1. doi: 10.1186/1744-9081-5-1.
The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a common paradigm used to study the interactions between emotions and decision making, yet little consensus exists on the cognitive process determining participants' decisions, what affects them, and how these processes interact with each other. A novel conceptual framework is proposed according to which behavior in the IGT reflects a balance between two dissociable processes; a cognitively demanding process that tracks each option's long-term payoff, and a lower-level, automatic process that is primarily sensitive to loss frequency and magnitude.
A behavioral experiment was carried out with a modified version of IGT. In this modified version, participants went through an additional phase of interaction, designed to measure performance without further learning, in which no feedback on individual decisions was given. A secondary distractor task was presented in either the first or the second phase of the experiment. Behavioral measures of performance tracking both payoff and frequency sensitivity in choices were collected throughout the experiment.
Consistent with our framework, the results confirmed that: (a) the two competing cognitive processes can be dissociated; (b) that learning from decision outcomes requires central cognitive resources to estimate long-term payoff; and (c) that the decision phase itself can be carried out during an interfering task once learning has occurred.
The experimental results support our novel description of the cognitive processes underlying performance in the Iowa Gambling Task. They also suggest that patients' impairments in this and other gambling paradigms can originate from a number of different causes, including a failure in allocating resources among cognitive strategies. This latter interpretation might be particularly useful in explaining the impairments of patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions and, by extension, the contribution of this brain region to human decision making.
Iowa 赌博任务（IGT）是一种用于研究情绪和决策之间相互作用的常用范式，但对于决定参与者决策的认知过程、影响因素以及这些过程如何相互作用，尚未达成共识。根据这一新颖的概念框架，IGT 中的行为反映了两个可分离过程之间的平衡；一个是需要认知能力的过程，它跟踪每个选项的长期回报，另一个是较低层次的、主要对损失频率和幅度敏感的自动过程。
我们进行了一项行为实验，使用了经过修改的 IGT 版本。在这个修改版本中，参与者经历了一个额外的互动阶段，旨在在没有进一步学习的情况下测量表现，在这个阶段中，不会对个人决策进行反馈。在实验的第一阶段或第二阶段，都会呈现一个次要的干扰任务。在整个实验过程中，收集了跟踪选择中收益和频率敏感性的行为表现测量。
与我们的框架一致，结果证实：（a）两种竞争的认知过程可以分离；（b）从决策结果中学习需要中央认知资源来估计长期回报；（c）一旦学习发生，决策阶段本身可以在干扰任务期间进行。
实验结果支持我们对 Iowa 赌博任务中表现背后的认知过程的新颖描述。它们还表明，患者在这一任务和其他赌博范式中的障碍可能源于多种不同的原因，包括在认知策略之间分配资源的失败。后一种解释可能特别有助于解释腹内侧前额叶皮层损伤患者的障碍，以及该脑区对人类决策的贡献。
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