What have we learned about the processes involved in the Iowa Gambling Task from developmental studies?

Abstract

Developmental studies using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) or child-friendly adaptations of the IGT converged in showing that children and adolescents exhibit a strong bias in favor of disadvantageous choices whereas adults learn to decide advantageously during the course of the task. In the present article, we reviewed developmental studies that used the IGT or child-friendly adaptations of the IGT to show how these findings provide a better understanding of the processes involved in decision-making under uncertainty. For instance, developmental studies have underlined that until late adolescence, the dominant strategy is to focus only on the frequency of punishment and to choose among options with infrequent losses. Indeed, school-aged children and adolescents' choices in the IGT seem to be guided by the loss frequency leading them to fail in distinguishing between advantageous and disadvantageous options. In addition, recent developmental studies revealed that adults switch less often after losses than school-aged children and adolescents. These findings suggest that psychological tolerance to loss may facilitate learning the characteristics of each option, which in turn improves the ability to choose advantageously. In conclusion, developmental studies help us refine our understanding of decision-making.

Decision-making of Prefrontal Patients with the Iowa Gambling Task: Unexpected Spared Performances and Preliminary Evidence for the Need of Alternative Measures

“…In other words, control subjects seemed able to consider both the frequency of losses and the long-term outcome during the IGT-i.e., they favored the good decks and the decks with low frequency of losses. In that sense, our results corroborated those of developmental studies which demonstrated that only healthy adults seemed to consider both loss frequency and final outcome in an adapted version of the IGT (Aïte et al, 2012;Cassotti, Aïte, Osmont, Houdé, & Borst, 2014).…”

“…In conclusion, our study confirms the findings of publications that address the influence of gain-loss frequency in analyzing control subjects' performance on the IGT, and showed that healthy adults are not only guided by the long-term outcome but also by the frequency of loss (Aïte et al, 2012;Beitz et al, 2014;Cassotti et al, 2014). These developmental studies also indicate that impaired performances on the IGT of both children and older adults are due to a loss frequency bias-i.e.…”

“…In addition, frontal patients performed significantly worse than controls on executive measures, especially for inhibition and rule detection. These results are of interest because they are consistent with the recent hypothesis that inhibitory control of intuitive exploration strategies is necessary to integrate both loss frequency and long-term outcome during IGT completion (Cassotti et al, 2014). It should be noted however that correlation analyses showed no relationship between cognitive and IGT performances, a result in accordance with those of previous studies which attempted to link cognitive performances to IGT score and demonstrated a small correlation (see Toplak, Sorge, Benoit, West, & Stanovich, 2010 for a review).…”

“…It should be noted however that correlation analyses showed no relationship between cognitive and IGT performances, a result in accordance with those of previous studies which attempted to link cognitive performances to IGT score and demonstrated a small correlation (see Toplak, Sorge, Benoit, West, & Stanovich, 2010 for a review). These preliminary findings raise the question of whether the inability to consider the frequency of losses during IGT achievement can be considered as a primary deficit or can be caused by other cognitive deficits like executive impairments, as proposed by Cassotti et al (2014). Future studies should address this question with a larger number of subjects and a more exhaustive cognitive assessment.…”

An Italian translation and validation of the Consideration of Future Consequences-14 Scale

“…Finally, though the present data do not directly indicate the mechanisms for the age differences uncovered in this research, we don't rule out that the possibility that the difference observed between younger and older adolescents may depend also on the neuroanatomical and neurofunctional development of the prefrontal cortex across childhood and adolescence, given that several studies have demonstrated that younger adolescents are more "myopic for the future" than late adolescents and adults in decision-making behavioral tasks, such as the Iowa Gambling Task (Cassotti, Houdé, & Moutier, 2011;Cauffman et al, 2010;Crone & Dahl, 2012;Crone & van der Molen, 2004;Hooper, Luciana, Conklin, & Yarger, 2004;; see Beitz, Salthouse, &Davis, 2014 andCassotti, Aïte, Osmont, Houdé, &Borst, 2014 for reviews).…”