title: Insensitivity to the Magnitude of Potential Gains or Losses When Making Risky Choices: Women With Borderline Personality Disorder Compared With Bipolar Disorder and Controls.
abstract: Poor decision-making is a feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar disorder (BD). Twenty women with BPD, 20 women with BD, and 20 healthy females completed a risky choice task. Those with BPD exhibited altered processing of information about potential gains and losses, with a bias toward large compared to small gains, large compared to small losses, and a tendency to choose outcomes with a negative expected value. This failure to use explicit reinforcement signals was not observed in those with BD. Difficulties using reward information to make decisions may impair day-to-day function. Such impairments offer new treatment targets in BPD.
authors.affiliation: University Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, U. K.
authors.forename: Kate E A
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Saunders
authors.affiliation: University Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, U. K.
authors.forename: Guy M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Goodwin
authors.affiliation: University Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, U. K.|School of Psychology, Bangor University, Gwynedd, U.K.
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Rogers
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000628:therapy; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000628:therapy; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012201:Reward; D012306:Risk; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012727:Sex Characteristics