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Altered adaptive but not veridical decision-making in substance dependent individuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2006

ANTONIO VERDEJO-GARCÍA ,
RAQUEL VILAR-LÓPEZ ,
MIGUEL PÉREZ-GARCÍA ,
KENNETH PODELL  and
ELKHONON GOLDBERG
ANTONIO VERDEJO-GARCÍA
Affiliation:
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain Instituto de Neurociencias Federico Olóriz, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
RAQUEL VILAR-LÓPEZ
Affiliation:
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain Departamento de Medicina Nuclear, Hospital Universitario Virgen De Las Nieves, Granada, Spain
MIGUEL PÉREZ-GARCÍA
Affiliation:
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain Instituto de Neurociencias Federico Olóriz, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
KENNETH PODELL
Affiliation:
Departments of Psychiatry, Henry Ford Health System and Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
ELKHONON GOLDBERG
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York
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Abstract

Drug addiction is associated with impaired judgment in unstructured situations in which success depends on self-regulation of behavior according to internal goals (adaptive decision-making). However most executive measures are aimed at assessing decision-making in structured scenarios, in which success is determined by external criteria inherent to the situation (veridical decision-making). The aim of this study was to examine the performance of Substance Abusers (SA, n = 97) and Healthy Comparison participants (HC, n = 81) in two behavioral tasks that mimic the uncertainty inherent in real-life decision-making: the Cognitive Bias Task (CB) and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) (administered only to SA). A related goal was to study the interdependence between performances on both tasks. We conducted univariate analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to contrast the decision-making performance of both groups; and used correlation analyses to study the relationship between both tasks. SA showed a marked context-independent decision-making strategy on the CB's adaptive condition, but no differences were found on the veridical conditions in a subsample of SA (n = 34) and HC (n = 22). A high percentage of SA (75%) also showed impaired performance on the IGT. Both tasks were only correlated when no impaired participants were selected. Results indicate that SA show abnormal decision-making performance in unstructured situations, but not in veridical situations. (JINS, 2006, 12, 90–99.)

Keywords

Prefrontal cortexAddictive behaviorDecision-makingGambling taskCognitive bias taskNeuropsychological tests
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 90 - 99
Copyright
© 2006 The International Neuropsychological Society

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