Is deck B a disadvantageous deck in the Iowa Gambling Task?

Ching-Hung Lin¹^,2 , Yao-Chu Chiu³ , Po-Lei Lee²^,4 and Jen-Chuen Hsieh¹^,2^,5

¹Institute of Neuroscience, School of Life Science, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

²Laboratory of Integrated Brain Research, Department of Medical Research & Education, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

³Department of Psychology, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan

⁴Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

⁵Research Center for Integrative Neuroimaging and Neuroinformatics, National Health Research Institutes, Taipei, Taiwan

author email corresponding author email

Behavioral and Brain Functions 2007, 3:16doi:10.1186/1744-9081-3-16


Published:	15 March 2007

Abstract

Background

The Iowa gambling task is a popular test for examining monetary decision behavior under uncertainty. According to Dunn et al. review article, the difficult-to-explain phenomenon of "prominent deck B" was revealed, namely that normal decision makers prefer bad final-outcome deck B to good final-outcome decks C or D. This phenomenon was demonstrated especially clearly by Wilder et al. and Toplak et al. The "prominent deck B" phenomenon is inconsistent with the basic assumption in the IGT; however, most IGT-related studies utilized the "summation" of bad decks A and B when presenting their data, thereby avoiding the problems associated with deck B.

Methods

To verify the "prominent deck B" phenomenon, this study launched a two-stage simple version IGT, namely, an AACC and BBDD version, which possesses a balanced gain-loss structure between advantageous and disadvantageous decks and facilitates monitoring of participant preferences after the first 100 trials.

Results

The experimental results suggested that the "prominent deck B" phenomenon exists in the IGT. Moreover, participants cannot suppress their preference for deck B under the uncertain condition, even during the second stage of the game. Although this result is incongruent with the basic assumption in IGT, an increasing number of studies are finding similar results. The results of the AACC and BBDD versions can be congruent with the decision literatures in terms of gain-loss frequency.

Conclusion

Based on the experimental findings, participants can apply the "gain-stay, loss-shift" strategy to overcome situations involving uncertainty. This investigation found that the largest loss in the IGT did not inspire decision makers to avoid choosing bad deck B.