Altered adaptive but not veridical decision-making in substance dependent individuals.
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.
Verdejo-García
Antonio
A
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain. averdejo@ugr.es
Vilar-López
Raquel
R
Pérez-García
Miguel
M
Podell
Kenneth
K
Goldberg
Elkhonon
E
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005715:Gambling / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*