Article
A Javascript-based Gambling Tool Device for Decision-Making Tasks in Psychological Research
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Authors
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Sherine Franckenstein
- Department of Psychology and Psychotherapy, Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Deutschland
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Agis Wichert
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Thomas Ostermann
- Universität Witten/Herdecke, Witten, Deutschland
| Published: | August 29, 2017 |
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Outline
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Introduction: Decision making is one of the most complex tasks in human behavior [1]. In the past, researchers have tried to understand how humans make decisions and designed neuropsychological tests to assess reward related decision making by evaluating the preference for smaller but immediate rewards over larger but delayed rewards or by evaluating the tolerance of risk in favor of a desired reward [2]. The latter are also known as gambling tasks. Various types of those gambling tasks have been used for experimental situations to investigate decision-making under ambiguous conditions [3]. The most commonly known gambling tasks are the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), and the the game of dice task.
Methods: We developed a new version of the Game of Dice task to investigate decision making with negative Feedback. For this reason, we designed a program based on JavaScript in which the participants are exposed with negative feedback in all bets and thus, lose their virtual capital. The software can be freely configured to deliver random results as well as always losses for the player.
Results: Our program records all moves of the players. Firstly, it documents some standard information like the day, time or reaction time of a player. Additionally, it records which bet options are chosen by each player and if they prefer special opportunities. Moreover, information is presented if the bet was performed correctly and if the subjects won the bet. Furthermore, we gather the experimental conditions (“fake condition“) which means that all the bets in the experimental conditions lose.
Discussion: Computerized versions of gambling tasks are useful, as they allow for the task to be used in more complex experimental and online settings and can make the task more standardized across studies [4]. However, only a few platform independent versions of such tasks are freely available. Thus, with our approach accessibility and availability for various populations are enhanced.
Die Autoren geben an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht.
Die Autoren geben an, dass kein Ethikvotum erforderlich ist.
References
- 1.
- Brand M, Kalbe E, Labudda K, Fujiwara E, Kessler J, Markowitsch HJ. Decision-making impairments in patients with pathological gambling. Psychiatry research. 2005;133(1):91-99.
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- Brand M, Labudda K, Markowitsch HJ. Neuropsychological correlates of decision-making in ambiguous and risky situations. Neural Networks. 2006;19(8):1266-1276.
- 3.
- Buelow MT, Blaine AL. The assessment of risky decision making: A factor analysis of performance on the Iowa Gambling Task, Balloon Analogue Risk Task, and Columbia Card Task. Psychological assessment. 2015;27(3):777.
- 4.
- Dancy CL, Ritter FE. IGT-Open: An open-source, computerized version of the Iowa Gambling Task. Behavior Research Methods. 2016;49:1-7.
