Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Stress, Decision Making, Iowa Gambling Task, Psychophysiology »

Multiple studies have shown that performance on behavioral decision-making tasks, such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), is influenced by external factors, such as mood. However, the research regarding the influence of worry is mixed, and no research has examined the effect of math or test anxiety on these tasks. The present study investigated the effects of anxiety (including math anxiety) and math performance on the IGT and BART in a sample of 137 undergraduate students. Math performance and worry were not correlated with performance on the IGT, and no variables were correlated with BART performance. Linear regressions indicated math anxiety, physiological anxiety, social concerns/stress, and test anxiety significantly predicted disadvantageous selections on the IGT during the transition from decision making under ambiguity to decision making under risk. Implications for clinical evaluation of decision making are discussed.

The ability to make risky decisions in stressful contexts has been largely investigated in experimental settings. We examined this ability during the first months of COVID-19 pandemic, when in Italy people were exposed to a prolonged stress condition, mainly caused by a rigid lockdown. Participants among the general population completed two cognitive tasks, an Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which measures individual risk/reward decision-making tendencies, and a Go/No-Go task (GNG), to test impulsivity, together with two questionnaires, the Perceived Stress Scale and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales. The Immune Status Questionnaire was additionally administered to explore the impact of the individual health status on decision making. The effect of the questionnaires scores on task performance was examined. The results showed that higher levels of perceived stress and a more self-reported vulnerable immune status were associated, separately, with less risky/more advantageous choices in the IGT in young male participants but with more risky/less advantageous choices in older male participants. These effects were not found in female participants. Impulsivity errors in the GNG were associated with more anxiety symptoms. These findings bring attention to the necessity of taking into account decision-making processes during stressful conditions, especially in the older and more physically vulnerable male population.

Background.Previous research on impulsivity in borderline personality disorder (BPD) has revealed inconsistent findings. Impulsive behaviour is often observed during states of emotional distress and might be exaggerated by current attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in individuals with BPD. We aimed to investigate different components of impulsivity dependent on stress induction controlling for self-reported ADHD symptoms in BPD.Method.A total of 31 unmedicated women with BPD and 30 healthy women (healthy controls; HCs), matched for age, education and intelligence, completed self-reports and behavioural tasks measuring response inhibition (go/stop task) and feedback-driven decision making (Iowa Gambling Task) under resting conditions and after experimental stress induction. ADHD symptoms were included as a covariate in the analyses of behavioural impulsivity. Additionally, self-reported emotion-regulation capacities were assessed.Results.BPD patients reported higher impulsive traits than HCs. During stress conditions – compared with resting conditions – self-reported impulsivity was elevated in both groups. Patients with BPD reported higher state impulsivity under both conditions and a significantly stronger stress-dependent increase in state impulsivity. On the behavioural level, BPD patients showed significantly impaired performance on the go/stop task under stress conditions, even when considering ADHD symptoms as a covariate, but not under resting conditions. No group differences on the Iowa Gambling Task were observed. Correlations between impulsivity measures and emotion-regulation capacities were observed in BPD patients.Conclusions.Findings suggest a significant impact of stress on self-perceived state impulsivity and on response disinhibition (even when considering current ADHD symptoms) in females with BPD.

Despite the widely observed high risk-taking behaviors in males, studies using the Iowa gambling task (IGT) have suggested that males choose safe long-term rewards over risky short-term rewards. The role of sex and stress hormones in male decision-making is examined in the initial uncertainty and the latter risk phase of the IGT. The task was tested at peak hormone activity, with breath counting to facilitate cortisol regulation and its cognitive benefits. Results from IGT decision-making before and after counting with saliva samples from two all-male groups (breath vs. number counting) indicated that cortisol declined independent of counting. IGT decision-making showed phase-specific malleability: alteration in the uncertainty phase and stability in the risk phase. Working memory showed alteration, whereas inhibition task performance remained stable, potentially aligning with the phase-specific demands of working memory and inhibition. The results of hierarchical regression for the uncertainty and risk trials indicated that testosterone improved the model fit, cortisol was detrimental for decision-making in uncertainty, and decision-making in the risk trials was benefitted by testosterone. Cortisol regulation accentuated hormones’ phase-specific effects on decision-making. Aligned with the dual-hormone hypothesis, sex, and stress hormones might jointly regulate male long-term decision-making in the IGT.

Men often make riskier decisions than women across a wide range of real-life behaviors. Whether this sex difference is accentuated, diminished, or stable under stressful conditions is, however, contested in the scientific literature. A critical blind spot lies amid this contestation: Most studies use standardized, laboratory-based, cognitive measures of decision making rather than complex real-life social simulation tasks to assess risk-related behavior. To address this blind spot, we investigated the effects of acute psychosocial stress on risk decision making in men and women (N = 80) using a standardized cognitive measure (the Iowa Gambling Task; IGT) and a novel task that simulated a real-life social situation (an online chatroom in which participants interacted with other men and women in sexually suggestive scenarios). Participants were exposed to either an acute psychosocial stressor or an equivalent control condition. Stressor-exposed participants were further characterized as high- or low-cortisol responders. Results confirmed that the experimental manipulation was effective. On the IGT, participants characterized as low-cortisol responders (as well as those in the Non-Stress group) made significantly riskier decisions than those characterized as high-cortisol responders. Similarly, in the online chatroom, participants characterized as low-cortisol responders (but not those characterized as high-cortisol responders) were, relative to those in the Non-Stress group, significantly more likely to make risky decisions. Together, these results suggest that at lower levels of cortisol both men and women tend to make riskier decisions in both economic and social spheres.

Discontinuance of information systems (IS) is a common phenomenon. It is thus critical to understand the decision process and psychophysiological mechanisms that underlie the intention and corresponding behaviors to discontinue IS use, particularly within the digital financial technology usage context, where continuance rates remain low despite increased adoption. Discontinuance has been identified as one coping behavior to avoid stressful situations. However, research has not yet explored this phenomenon toward digital financial technologies. This manuscript builds upon a pilot study that investigated the combined influence of technostress and financial stress on users’ responses toward digital financial decision-making tasks and aims to disentangle the specific impacts of unexpected technology behaviors and perceived financial loss on attentional and behavioral disengagement as coping responses, which may lead to discontinuance from digital financial technology usage. A two-factor within-subject design was developed, where perceived techno-unreliability as variable system response time delays under time pressure and perceived financial loss as negative financial outcomes were manipulated in a 3 × 2 design. Psychophysiological, perceptual, and behavioral data were collected from N = 15 participants while performing an adapted version of the Iowa Gambling Task. The results indicate that unexpected technology behaviors have a far greater impact than perceived financial loss on (1) physiological arousal and emotional valence, demonstrated by decreased skin conductance levels and curvilinear emotional valence responses, (2) feedback processing and decision-making, corroborated by curvilinear negative heart rate (BPM) and positive heart rate variability (HRV) responses, decreased skin conductance level (SCL), increased perceptions of system unresponsiveness and techno-unreliability, and mental workload, (3) attentional disengagement supported by curvilinear HRV and decreased SCL, and (4) behavioral disengagement as coping response, represented by curvilinear decision time and increasingly poor financial decision quality. Overall, these results suggest a feedforward and feedback loop of cognitive and affective mechanisms toward attentional and behavioral disengagement, which may lead to a decision of disengagement-discontinuance as a coping outcome in stressful human-computer interaction situations.

Lo stress e la presa di decisione sono fenomeni intimamente connessi e l’effetto dello stress sulla qualità delle decisioni è un tema di grande interesse e dalle forti ricadute potenziali (Starcke and Brand 2012). Fino ad oggi, la maggior parte delle ricerche presenti in letteratura sul tema si sono limitate a studiare gli effetti dello stress incidentale sulla presa di decisione in condizioni di rischio, ossia in compiti decisionali con regole esplicite, governati principalmente dal funzionamento di processi esecutivi (Al'Absi, Hugdahl et al. 2002; Het, Ramlow et al. 2005; Preston, Buchanan et al. 2007; Starcke, Wolf et al. 2008). Nella vita quotidiana, tuttavia, spesso le persone si trovano a decidere in condizioni ambigue, senza avere a disposizione elementi completi sui quali basare le proprie scelte, come quando ad esempio, devono scegliere fra carriera e famiglia o se accettare o rifiutare un nuovo lavoro. Durante tale tipologia di compito decisionale, svolgono un ruolo importante diverse aree della corteccia prefrontale (Bechara, Damasio et al. 1994; Bechara, Damasio et al. 1999; Bechara, Damasio et al. 2000), regioni cerebrali che, come dimostrato in numerosi studi, sono modificate nel loro funzionamento sia dallo stress transitorio (Bandler, Keay et al. 2000; Cerqueira, Mailliet et al. 2007; Arnsten 2009) che dallo stress cronico (Radley, Rocher et al. 2006; Cerqueira, Mailliet et al. 2007; Holmes and Wellman 2008). Lo stress, inoltre, ha ricadute differenti sul funzionamento della corteccia prefrontale negli uomini e nelle donne (Herman, Prewitt et al. 1996; Herman and Cullinan 1997) e ciò potrebbe avere effetti diversi sui meccanismi psicofisiologici alla base di compiti decisionali ambigui. Sono diversi i meccanismi psicofisiologici alla base della presa di decisione che si ipotizza possano essere danneggiati da stressor incidentali (Starcke and Brand 2012). In particolare tale condizione potrebbe modificare il funzionamento delle risposte immediatamente precedenti le scelte indice di arousal emotivo (Bechara and Damasio 2005), la capacità degli individui di spostare l’attenzione in modo flessibile (Tsigos and Chrousos 2002; Liston, McEwen et al. 2009) o, ancora, potrebbe modificare la sensibilità degli individui agli esiti di scelte svantaggiose (Marinelli and Piazza 2002; Koob and MJ 2007; Petzold, Plessow et al. 2010; Lighthall, Sakaki et al. 2012). Obiettivo principale degli studi è stato quello di cercare di rispondere ad alcune delle numerose domande di ricerca ancora aperte sul tema stress e presa di decisione e, in particolare, di verificare in modo approfondito le ricadute dello stress incidentale, sia transitorio che cronico, sulla presa di decisione in condizione di ambiguità, tenendo conto dei limiti che hanno caratterizzato le ricerche precedenti e cercando di mettere a punto una metodologia di studio ad hoc che potesse superare tali limitazioni. Gli studi, inoltre, sono stati ideati con lo scopo di verificare empiricamente le differenze di genere osservate in letteratura circa l’impatto dello stress transitorio su tali processi decisionali (Stout, Rock et al. 2005; Preston, Buchanan et al. 2007) e di indagare in modo approfondito i diversi meccanismi psicofisiologici coinvolti nel processo decisionale che si ipotizza possano essere danneggiati dalla presenza di stress incidentale, quali il funzionamento delle risposte pre-scelta legate a meccanismi emotivi automatici (Bechara and Damasio 2005) e a processi attentivi (Al'Absi, Hugdahl et al. 2002; Het, Ramlow et al. 2005; Preston, Buchanan et al. 2007; Starcke, Wolf et al. 2008), così come la sensibilità degli individui agli esiti di scelte svantaggiose (Petzold, Plessow et al. 2010; Lighthall, Sakaki et al. 2012). Gli elementi d’innovatività del presente lavoro sono diversi e comprendono: (1) approfondimento dell'argomento stress incidentale e presa di decisione, tema rilevante e con importanti ricadute nella vita quotidiana delle persone ma ancora poco esplorato a livello scientifico; (2) messa a punto di una metodologia di studio innovativa per lo studio dei processi psicofisiologici durante la presa di decisione in condizione di ambiguità, al fine di superare i limiti metodologici che caratterizzano gli studi presenti in letteratura su tale tematica. Il lavoro di tesi si è articolato in due studi: il primo, che ha coinvolto 39 soggetti, è stato condotto con l’obiettivo di offrire un’indagine sistematica dell’effetto dello stress transitorio sulla prestazione decisionale in compiti ambigui, (Preston, Buchanan et al. 2007), mentre il secondo studio, che ha incluso un campione di 75 individui, è stato dedicato alla verifica delle ricadute dello stress cronico sulla prestazione decisionale in condizione di ambiguità, nonché sui possibili effetti congiunti fra stress cronico e stress transitorio sulla qualità delle decisioni.

The study seeks to bring together literature on decision-making, the effects of work-related demands and stress, and individual differences in trait anxiety on near and far transfer effects of emotional working memory training (eWM). A sample of 31 students and working participants underwent emotional working memory training through an adaptive dual n-back method or a placebo face match training task for 14 days. Pre- and post-training measures were taken of a near transfer task, digit span, medium transfer measure of executive control, emotional Stroop, and a far transfer task of decision-making under uncertainty, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). In line with previous studies, eWM was expected to show gains in transfer task performance between pre- and post-training, and, especially for those scoring high on trait anxiety and workplace measures of stress demands (taken from COPSOQ), for whom there is more scope for improvement in emotional regulation. Gains in emotional Stroop specifically were further expected to show support for the effects of eWM training on emotional well-being in addition to decision-making. Results fell short of replicating previous work on transfer gains, though interference effects in Stroop did lessen in the eWM training group. Relationships between work demands, anxiety, stress and performance in the training itself, reinforce previous research showing that work stress and anxiety lead to cognitive failures, highlighting the importance of intervention studies in the organizational field, but they were not linked to benefits of the training. Resource and methodological limitations of the current study are considered, especially those involved in conducting pre-post designs and cognitive testing online.