Effects of anticipatory stress on decision making in a gambling task.

Recent research has highlighted the fact that emotion that is intrinsic to a task benefits decision making. The authors tested the converse hypothesis, that unrelated emotion disrupts decision making. Participants played the Iowa Gambling Task, during which only experimental participants anticipated giving a public speech (A. Bechara, D. Tranel, & H. Damasio, 2000). Experimental participants who were anticipating the speech learned the contingencies of the choices more slowly, and there was a gender interaction later in the game, with stressed female participants having more explicit knowledge and more advantageous performance and stressed male participants having poorer explicit knowledge and less advantageous performance. Effects of anticipatory stress on decision making are complex and depend on both the nature of the task and the individual. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neuropsychological correlates of decision making in patients with bulimia nervosa.

In addition to the core psychopathology of bulimia nervosa (BN), patients with BN often show impulsive behavior that has been related to decision making deficits in other patient groups, such as individuals with anorexia nervosa and pathological gamblers. However, it remains unclear whether BN patients also show difficulties in decision making. In this study, 14 patients with BN and 14 healthy comparison subjects, matched for age, gender, education, body mass index, and intelligence, were examined with the Game of Dice Task (M. Brand, E. Fujiwara, et al., 2005), a gambling task that has fixed winning probabilities and explicit rules for gains and losses, as well as with a neuropsychological test battery and personality questionnaires. On the task, the patients with BN chose the disadvantageous alternatives more frequently than did the comparison subjects. Performance on the Game of Dice Task was related to executive functioning but not to other neuropsychological functions, personality, or disease-specific variables in the BN group. Thus, in patients with BN, decision making abnormalities and executive reductions can be demonstrated and might be neuropsychological correlates of the patients' dysfunctional everyday-life decision making behavior. Neurocognitive functions should be considered in the treatment of BN. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response inhibition deficit is involved in poor decision making under risk in nonamnesic individuals with alcoholism.

Individuals with alcoholism exhibit poor decision making as reflected by their continued alcohol use despite encountering problems and by low performance in laboratory tasks of decision making. Here, the authors investigated the relative contribution of several distinct processes of executive functions in performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994) in recently detoxified individuals with alcoholism. Compared to matched healthy participants, individuals with alcoholism showed below-normal scores in the last 20 trials of the IGT as well as on other tasks of executive functions, specifically those assessing the capacity to manipulate information stored in working memory, detect abstract rules, or inhibit prepotent responses. Prepotent response inhibition best predicted performance in the late trials of the IGT, that is, when participants have likely acquired knowledge about the reward/punishment contingencies of the task. These results underline the important role that response inhibition plays in decision making, especially in risky situations, when knowledge of the probability of a given outcome becomes available (i.e. decisions under risk). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neuropsychological mediators of the links among age, chronic illness, and everyday problem solving.

Reductions in everyday problem solving (EPS) are often reported in older age, although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The authors examined the role of 2 variables predicted to mediate (neuropsychological abilities and health status) or moderate (health status) the relationship between age and EPS performance. Toward these ends, they compared EPS and neuropsychological performance in 50 functionally independent adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and 64 control participants matched on age and education. Both older age and CKD were associated with worse performance on measures of EPS and memory/executive abilities. Neuropsychological abilities were positively associated with EPS performance. In both the full sample and control participants only, memory/executive functioning mediated the association between presence of chronic illness and EPS. Furthermore, memory/executive functioning partially mediated the link between age and EPS. Findings indicate that relations among age, health status, and EPS are not straightforward. Although performance on neuropsychological measures appeared to underlie EPS declines in chronic illness, increasing age remained independently associated with reduced EPS. The authors discuss implications for models of adult developmental changes in everyday cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal communication impairments and cognitive control components in people with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia involves multiple communication impairments, including (a) disorganized speech, or formal thought disorder (FTD); and (b) decreased speech output, or poverty of speech. Both FTD and poverty of speech have been hypothesized to be associated with deficits in executive functioning or cognitive control. The current study examined whether FTD and poverty of speech were differentially associated with two distinct aspects of cognitive control, working memory and controlled retrieval. Compared with control participants (n = 30), people with schizophrenia (n = 47) exhibited poorer performance on both working memory and controlled retrieval tasks. However, only FTD (and not poverty of speech) was associated with poor working memory. In contrast, only poverty of speech (and not FTD) had a significant zero-order association with poor controlled retrieval. At the same time, working memory and controlled retrieval interacted to predict FTD, with the highest amount of FTD associated with both poor working memory and poor controlled retrieval. In contrast, psychometric control tasks were not associated with FTD or poverty of speech. This research suggests that FTD and poverty of speech are differentially associated with deficits in distinct aspects of cognitive control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decision-Making Deficits of Korsakoff Patients in a New Gambling Task With Explicit Rules: Associations With Executive Functions.

Decision-making deficits reflected by risky decisions in gambling tasks have been associated with frontal lobe dysfunctions in various neurologic and psychiatric populations. The question remains whether decision-making impairments are related to executive functions. The authors developed a new gambling task, the Game of Dice Task, with explicit and stable rules for reinforcement and punishment, to investigate relations between executive functions and risk-taking behavior in an explicit decision-making situation. A sample of 35 alcoholic Korsakoff patients and 35 healthy controls was examined with the Game of Dice Task and a neuropsychological test battery. Results show that Korsakoff patients are strongly impaired in this explicit decision-making task and that these disturbances are correlated with specific executive functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in explicit and implicit memory for pictures.

In the present study, the authors examined age effects in memory for nonverbal material. A picture fragment completion task was used to test explicit and implicit memory in a younger and an older group. Explicit memory was indexed by free recall of pictures, whereas implicit memory was indexed by perceptual learning (priming). Both free recall and perceptual learning performance were found to be impaired in the older group. A measure of executive functioning was found to be predictive of both explicit and implicit memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between formal thought disorder and executive functioning component processes.

In 2 studies, associations between formal thought disorder (FTD) and 2 components of executive functioning, processing of context and interference resolution, were investigated. One study, involving people with schizophrenia, examined associations between performance on processing of context (N-back) and interference resolution (interference in Steinberg probe recognition) tasks and FTD. The second study, involving nonpsychiatric participants, was an analogue study that examined the effects of simulated processing of context (performance of 1-back with distraction) and interference resolution (telling new stories about previously seen pictures) deficits on FTD in a speech production task. In both studies, processing of context deficits predicted FTD. Moreover, in both studies, the effect of processing of context deficits on FTD was especially pronounced when combined with interference resolution deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal attributions and male sexual arousal: The impact of attributions for a bogus erectile difficulty on sexual arousal, cognitions, and affect.

After viewing 2 sexually explicit films, 52 sexually functional participants were given bogus feedback indicating a low erectile response. The men were given either an external, fluctuating attribution (i.e., poor films) or an internal, stable attribution (i.e., problematic thoughts about sex) for the low arousal. As hypothesized, participants in the external, fluctuating group evidenced greater erectile response and subjective arousal during a 3rd film than did participants given the internal, stable attribution. This may indicate that after an occasion of erectile difficulty, the cause to which the difficulty is attributed plays an important role in future sexual functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired Decision Making Related to Working Memory Deficits in Individuals With Substance Addictions.

This study examined whether individuals with substance dependence (ISDs) show impairments in working memory and whether there is a relationship between their impairments in decision making as measured by the gambling task (GT) paradigm and working memory as measured by a delayed nonmatching to sample (DNMS) task. Using the GT, 11% of healthy control participants and 61% of ISDs opted for choices with high immediate gains in spite of higher future losses. For the ISDs and controls with equal GT impairments, the ISDs performed significantly lower than controls on the DNMS task. The nonimpaired ISDs on the GT also performed significantly worse than matched controls on the DNMS task. The DNMS task deficit in ISDs was across all delay times, suggesting the deficit may lie in the "executive" process of working memory, which supports earlier findings (E. M. Martin et al., 2003). The authors suggest that the prefrontal cortex hosts multiple distinct mechanisms of decision making and inhibitory control and that ISDs may be affected in any one or combination of them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decision makers' hindsight bias after receiving favorable and unfavorable feedback.

Two studies examined if decision makers show hindsight bias when feedback reflects upon their judgment. Study 1 investigated whether decision making heightens cognitive activity, and thereby reduces hindsight effects, or triggers self-serving mechanisms that prompt hindsight bias only when outcomes match favorably with decisions. Business students decided if they would purchase a company's stock, then received no feedback or feedback that the stock value increased or decreased. Consistent with a self-serving interpretation, relative to no-feedback participants, those whose outcomes matched favorably with their decisions showed hindsight bias and had a higher proportion of internal thoughts. In Study 2, favorable-feedback participants again showed hindsight bias, and had higher recall for decision-supportive items, but not when their tendency to take credit for success was suppressed. Discussion focuses on implications of decision makers' hindsight bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting medication adherence and employment status following kidney transplant: The relative utility of traditional and everyday cognitive approaches.

Objective: The authors investigated the utility of both traditional and everyday cognitive measures in predicting medication adherence and employment status among kidney transplant recipients. In addition, the role of noncognitive predictors was examined. Method: Cognitive measures of processing speed, memory, everyday problem solving, executive functioning, and questionnaires assessing mood, medication adherence, and employment status were individually administered to 108 kidney transplant recipients. Because the eligibility criteria differed for the two analyses, there were 103 participants in the medication adherence analyses and 94 participants in the employment analyses. Stepwise hierarchical regression and sequential binomial logistic regression analyses were conducted for continuous and dichotomous outcome measures, respectively. Results: Findings indicate that both poorer performance on the everyday problem-solving test and a higher number of depressive symptoms were predictive of poorer self-reported medication adherence (R2 = .19, p R2 = .29, ps     

Interference control, working memory, concept shifting, and verbal fluency in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

In this study, the authors aimed to examine 4 domains of executive functioning in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)--namely interference control, concept shifting, verbal fluency, and verbal working memory. Four groups of participants were included: (a) adults diagnosed with ADHD (ADHD-; n = 20), (b) adults diagnosed with both ADHD and 1 or more comorbid disorder(s) (ADHD+; n = 22), (c) adults referred for ADHD because of ADHD symptomatology but not diagnosed as such (non-ADHD; n = 34), and (d) healthy controls (n = 136). ADHD-related deficits (independent of comorbidity) were revealed for concept shifting and verbal working memory. In addition, the ADHD+ and non-ADHD groups displayed deficits in terms of general processing speed. Given that these deficits were not found in the ADHD- group, the authors contend that these deficits are likely attributable to comorbidity rather than ADHD itself. Contrary to the authors' expectations, these findings do not correspond with the cognitive subtype hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cumulative stress and cortisol disruption among Black and Hispanic pregnant women in an urban cohort.

While adult hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis functioning is thought to be altered by traumatic experiences, little data exist on the effects of cumulative stress on HPA functioning among pregnant women or among specific racial/ethnic groups. The goal of this study was to explore the effects of multiple social stressors on HPA axis functioning in a sample of urban Black (n = 68) and Hispanic (n = 132) pregnant women enrolled in the Asthma Coalition on Community, Environment, and Social Stress (ACCESS). Women were administered the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (R-CTS) survey, the Experiences of Discrimination (EOD) survey, the Crisis in Family Systems-Revised (CRISYS-R) negative life events survey, and the My Exposure to Violence (ETV) survey, which ascertains community violence exposure. A cumulative stress measure was derived from these instruments. Salivary cortisol samples were collected five times per day over three days in order to characterize diurnal salivary cortisol patterns. Repeated measures mixed models, stratified by race/ethnicity, were performed adjusting for education level, age, smoking status, body mass index and weeks pregnant at time of cortisol sampling. The majority of Hispanic participants (57%) had low cumulative stress, while Black participants had intermediate (35%) or high (41%) cumulative stress. Among Black but not Hispanic women, cumulative stress was associated with lower morning cortisol levels, including a flatter waking to bedtime rhythm. These analyses suggest that the combined effects of cumulative stressful experiences are associated with disrupted HPA functioning among pregnant women. The etiology of racial/ethnic differences in stress-induced HPA alterations warrants further research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative social evaluation, but not mere social presence, elicits cortisol responses to a laboratory stressor task.

Background: Recent research has supported the premise that performance conditions characterized by social-evaluative threat, in which an aspect of the self could be judged by others, are associated with cortisol responses. However, it remains unclear whether this effect is due to negative social evaluation per se or simply the presence of another during a performance situation. Method: In the present study, 89 undergraduates delivered a speech in 1 of 3 conditions: in front of an evaluative audience panel (social-evaluative threat [SET]), in the presence of an inattentive confederate (PRES), or alone in a room (non-SET). Results: Consistent with hypotheses, participants in the SET condition demonstrated a significant cortisol response, while those in the non-SET and PRES conditions did not show increases in this hormone. Further, participants in the SET condition who reported greater posttask levels of self-conscious cognitions and emotions demonstrated the greatest increases in cortisol. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the mere social presence of others is not driving the changes in cortisol observed under social-evaluative threat; instead, explicit negative social evaluation may be responsible for increases in this health-relevant physiological parameter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited-resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative.

The current research tested the hypothesis that making many choices impairs subsequent self-control. Drawing from a limited-resource model of self-regulation and executive function, the authors hypothesized that decision making depletes the same resource used for self-control and active responding. In 4 laboratory studies, some participants made choices among consumer goods or college course options, whereas others thought about the same options without making choices. Making choices led to reduced self-control (i.e., less physical stamina, reduced persistence in the face of failure, more procrastination, and less quality and quantity of arithmetic calculations). A field study then found that reduced self-control was predicted by shoppers' self-reported degree of previous active decision making. Further studies suggested that choosing is more depleting than merely deliberating and forming preferences about options and more depleting than implementing choices made by someone else and that anticipating the choice task as enjoyable can reduce the depleting effect for the first choices but not for many choices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal deception from late childhood to middle adolescence and its relation to executive functioning skills.

The present investigation examined 8- to 16-year-olds' tendency to lie, the sophistication of their lies, and related cognitive factors. Participants were left alone and asked not to look at the answers to a test, but the majority peeked. The researcher then asked a series of questions to examine whether the participants would lie about their cheating and, if they did lie, evaluate the sophistication of their lies. Additionally, participants completed measures of working memory, inhibitory control, and planning skills. Results revealed that the sophistication of 8- to 16-year-olds' lies, but not their decision to lie, was significantly related to executive functioning skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between sexual abuse and mild traumatic brain injury

It remains unclear why some individuals with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) complain of cognitive deficits many months after the injury. Given neuropathological changes associated with prolonged stress, such as occurs with repeated sexual abuse (SA), it seems possible that individuals who experienced SA might be predisposed to greater deficits after MTBI. Four groups of subjects were administered measures of cognitive and emotional functioning. These groups were those with MTBI (n = 10), those with a history of SA (n = 10), those with both MTBI and SA (n = 10), and normal control (NC) subjects (n = 10). Compared to the NC subjects, those with MTBI demonstrated deficits in working memory, those with SA demonstrated deficits in executive functioning, and those with both MTBI and SA demonstrated the greatest number of deficits which were in working memory, executive functioning and memory. Tests of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, while demonstrating significant symptoms in all clinical groups, did not correlate with the neuropsychological tests that differentiated the groups.     

Impact of Executive Function Deficits and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on Academic Outcomes in Children.

The association between executive function deficits (EFDs) and functional outcomes were examined among children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were children and adolescents with (n = 259) and without (n = 222) ADHD, as ascertained from pediatric and psychiatric clinics. The authors defined EFD as at least 2 executive function measures impaired. Significantly more children and adolescents with ADHD had EFDs than did control participants. ADHD with EFDs was associated with an increased risk for grade retention and a decrease in academic achievement relative to (a) ADHD alone, (b) controlled socioeconomic status, (c) learning disabilities, and (d) IQ. No differences were noted in social functioning or psychiatric comorbidity. Children and adolescents with ADHD and EFDs were found to be at high risk for significant impairments in academic functioning. These results support screening children with ADHD for EFDs to prevent academic failure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)