According to recent studies anxiety has a significant impact on cognitive functioning, especially on decision-making. Alcohol dependent patients (ADP) achieve worse performance on decision-making simulation tasks compared to healthy controls. Our aim was to investigate how trait anxiety is connected to decision-making mechanisms in ADP.

The data of 76 ADP have been analyzed. To examine decision-making mechanisms we used the “ABCD” version of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). The IGT total score was calculated and we divided the task into 5 equal blocks to study the pattern of the decision-making process. We administered the Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The patient group was arranged into two subgroups with median split method based on the STAI scores. One group (N=38) was characterized by low trait anxiety level, and the other (N=38) had high level of trait anxiety. For comparing the two groups’ decision-making mechanisms we used independent samples t-test.

The group with higher level of trait anxiety performed significantly poorer on the IGT (t=2.09, p=0.04). The detailed analysis of the two groups’ decision-making mechanisms showed that the difference between the groups became significant in the 5th block (t=2.57, p=0.01).

Decision-making deficit is not homogenous in the ADP group, as according to our results the trait anxiety level influences the adequacy of decision-making. Psycho-biological background of the inadequate decision-making needs further investigation and this knowledge could be used in the future to improve decision-making mechanisms of the ADP.