Gathmann Bettina, Pawlikowski Mirko, Schöler Tobias, Brand Matthias
General Psychology: Cognition, University of Duisburg-Essen, Forsthausweg 2, 47057, Duisburg, Germany.
Cogn Process. 2014 May;15(2):113-26. doi: 10.1007/s10339-013-0584-y. Epub 2013 Oct 24.
Previous studies demonstrated that executive functions are crucial for advantageous decision making under risk and that therefore decision making is disrupted when working memory capacity is demanded while working on a decision task. While some studies also showed that emotions can affect decision making under risk, it is unclear how affective processing and executive functions predict decision-making performance in interaction. The current experimental study used a between-subjects design to examine whether affective pictures (positive and negative pictures compared to neutral pictures), included in a parallel executive task (working memory 2-back task), have an impact on decision making under risk as assessed by the Game of Dice Task (GDT). Moreover, the performance GDT plus 2-back task was compared to the performance in the GDT without any additional task (GDT solely). The results show that the performance in the GDT differed between groups (positive, negative, neutral, and GDT solely). The groups with affective pictures, especially those with positive pictures in the 2-back task, showed more disadvantageous decisions in the GDT than the groups with neutral pictures and the group performing the GDT without any additional task. However, executive functions moderated the effect of the affective pictures. Regardless of affective influence, subjects with good executive functions performed advantageously in the GDT. These findings support the assumption that executive functions and emotional processing interact in predicting decision making under risk.
先前的研究表明，执行功能对于风险下的有利决策至关重要，因此，在进行决策任务时，当需要工作记忆容量时，决策就会受到干扰。虽然一些研究还表明，情绪会影响风险下的决策，但尚不清楚情感加工和执行功能如何在相互作用中预测决策表现。当前的实验研究采用被试间设计，以检验在并行执行任务（工作记忆2-回溯任务）中包含的情感图片（与中性图片相比的正性和负性图片）是否会对通过掷骰子任务（GDT）评估的风险下决策产生影响。此外，将GDT加2-回溯任务的表现与无任何额外任务的GDT（仅GDT）的表现进行了比较。结果表明，GDT中的表现因组而异（正性、负性、中性和仅GDT组）。有情感图片的组，尤其是在2-回溯任务中有正性图片的组，在GDT中做出的不利决策比有中性图片的组和执行无任何额外任务的GDT的组更多。然而，执行功能调节了情感图片的影响。无论情感影响如何，执行功能良好的受试者在GDT中表现出色。这些发现支持了执行功能和情绪加工在预测风险下决策时相互作用的假设。
