Iowa Gambling Task (IGT)
FREE for use with an Inquisit Lab or Inquisit Web license.Background
The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a widely used psychological assessment tool created in 1994 by Antoine Bechara and colleagues at the University of Iowa College of Medicine to examine decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and risk. The test was first used to demonstrate impaired decision-making in patients with damage to the ventromedial prefront cortex, supporting Damasio's "somatic marker hypothesis" that emotions are crucial for rational decision making. Use of the test has since expanded to study decision-making in a wide range of clinical and non-clinical populations.
Task Procedure
The participant is presented four decks of cards and instructed to draw a total of 100 cards, each from any of the decks, with each card resulting in a monetary gain or loss. Unbeknowst to the respondent, the expected payoff differs between decks, with two decks having "advantageous" payoff schedules and two having "disadvantageous" schedules.
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After each card, the respondent is notified of the gain or loss along with their cumulative winings/losings.
What it Measures
The Iowa Gambling Task is a general assessment of decision-making and impulsivity.
Psychological domains
- Decision-making: Response to potential rewards and lossse over time
- Risk-taking: Preference for high-reward/high risk or low-reward/low-risk
- Delay Discounting: Foregoing immediate rewards for better long-term outcomes
Main Performance Metrics
- Net Advantageous Selections: Difference between number of advantageous and disadvantageous selections
- Net Advantageous Selections Over Time: Difference between number of advantageous and disadvantageous selections in the first, second, third, fourth and fifth set of 20 trials
Psychiatric Conditions
IGT performance tends to be impaired or enhanced in patients with the following psychiatric conditions.
- Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
- Substance Use Disorders
- Pathological Gambling
- Psychopathy
- Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Bipolar Disorder
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Schizophrenia
- Major Depressive Disorder
- Anxiety Disorders
Available Test Variations
The Iowa Gambling Task by Bechara, Damasio, Tranel and Anderson (1994).
The Iowa Gambling Task by Bechara, Damasio, Tranel and Anderson (1994) with auditory feedback.
This runs a variation of the Iowa Gambling Task designed by Garon (2006) for use with children.
The variation of the Iowa Gambling Task that allows separate assessment of decisions in response to negative and positive feedback (Cauffman et al, 2010).
The S-IGT runs the Iowa Gambling Task within a social context by representing the four decks with faces that differ in trustworthiness (Perez et al, 2023)
References
Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Iowa Gambling Task (IGT).
Bechara A., Damasio A. R., Damasio H., Anderson S. W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7-15 .
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science 275, 1293–1295.
Hooper, C. J., Luciana, M., Conklin, H. M., Yarger, R. S. (2004). Adolescents' Performance on the Iowa Gambling Task: Implications for the Development of Decision Making and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex. Developmental Psychology, 40, 1148-1158.
Maia, T.V. & McClelland, J. L. (2004). A reexamination of the evidence for the somatic marker hypothesis: What participants really know in the Iowa gambling Task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 16075–16080.
Bowman, C. H., Evans, C. E.Y. , Turnbull, O. H. (2005). Artificial time-constraints on the Iowa Gambling Task: The effects on behavioral performance and subjective experience. Brain and Cognition, 57, 21–25.
Cathryn E. Y. Evans, Caroline H. Bowman, and Oliver H. Turnbull (2005). Subjective awareness on the Iowa Gambling Task: The key role of emotional experience in schizophrenia. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, Volume 27, 656-664.
Garon, N., C. Moore, and D.A.Waschbusch, Decision making in children with ADHD only,ADHD-anxious/depressed, and control children using a child version of the IowaGambling Task. J AttenDisord, 2006. 9(4): p. 607-19.
Verdejo-Garcia, A., Benbrook, A., Funderburk, F., David, P., Cadet, J. L., & Bolla, K. I. (2007). The differential relationship between cocaine use and marijuana use on decision-making performance over repeat testing with the Iowa Gambling Task. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 90(1), 2-11
Cauffman, E., Shulman, E.P, Steinberg, L., Claus, E., Marie T. Banich, M.T., Sandra Graham, S., & Jennifer Woolard, J. (2010). Age Differences in Affective Decision Making as Indexed by Performance on the Iowa Gambling Task. Developmental Psychology, Vol. 46, No. 1, 193–207.
Perez, E. et al (2023).The Social Iowa Gambling Task (S-IGT): A Novel Paradigm for Investigating Social Learning and Decision Making. preprint available here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/s5xq9_v1
Links
Wikipedia. About the Iowa Gambling Task from the free encyclopedia.