title: A working memory task reveals different patterns of impulsivity in male and female college students.
abstract: Impulsivity is an important personality trait that affects people's lives every day. Because of the complicated structures and various measurements of impulsivity, the conclusion that whether there were gender differences on impulsivity remained controversial. In our study, we used delay discounting and probability discounting to measure impulsive choice and employed stop signal reaction time task (SSRT) to measure impulsive action within the same subjects. No inherent gender differences were found, either on impulsive choice or on impulsive action. However, after adding a working memory (WM) task, we found an interaction between gender and WM: males made more impulsive choices in the delay discounting task, but females remained no change, and this only occurred when the reward amount was large; in the SSRT, the males showed better inhibitory control under the WM load condition, but females did not. These results demonstrate that gender difference does not exist on impulsivity biologically, but the increased working memory load could affect the gender's sense of delay gratification and the ability of inhibitory control differently. These findings can contribute to the studies of gender differences on impulsivity and draw attention to the need for further research that gender factors should be considered more carefully when exploring the effects of working memory.
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China.
authors.forename: Xiaolin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Mei
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Psychology, College of Humanities & Social Science, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan 030001, China.
authors.forename: Zhaoxia
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China. Electronic address: lixw701@sina.cn.
authors.forename: Xinwang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior; D065786:Delay Discounting; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011930:Reaction Time; D012201:Reward; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Gender; Impulsive action; Impulsive choice; Working memory