Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff in Decision-Making Performance among Pathological Gamblers

Background: Pathological gambling is classified as an impulse control disorder in the DSM-IV-TR; however, few studies have investigated the relationship between gambling behavior and impulsive decision-making in time-non-limited situations. Methods: The subjects performed the Matching Familiar Figur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European addiction research 2010-01, Vol.16 (1), p.23-30
Main Authors: Kertzman, Semion, Vainder, Michael, Vishne, Tali, Aizer, Anat, Kotler, Moshe, Dannon, Pinhas N.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Addictions
Addictive behaviors
Adult
Decision making
Decision Making - physiology
Female
Gambling
Gambling - psychology
Humans
Impulsive Behavior - physiopathology
Impulsive Behavior - psychology
Male
Middle Aged
Photic Stimulation - methods
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Research Report
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Summary:Background: Pathological gambling is classified as an impulse control disorder in the DSM-IV-TR; however, few studies have investigated the relationship between gambling behavior and impulsive decision-making in time-non-limited situations. Methods: The subjects performed the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT). The MFFT investigated the reflection-impulsivity dimension in pathological gamblers (n = 82) and demographically matched healthy subjects (n = 82).Results:Our study demonstrated that pathological gamblers had a significantly higher rate of errors than healthy controls (p = 0.01) but were not different in terms of response time (p = 0.49). We found a similar power of correlation between the number of errors and response time in both pathological gamblers and controls. We may conclude that impaired performance of our pathological gamblers as compared to controls in a situation without time limit pressure cannot be explained by a trade-off of greater speed at the cost of less accuracy. Conclusions: The results of our study showed that pathological gamblers tend to make more errors but do not exhibit quicker responses as compared to the control group. Diminished MFFT performance in pathological gamblers as compared to controls supports findings of previous studies which show that pathological gamblers have impaired decision-making. Further controlled studies with a larger sample size which examine MFFT performance in pathological gamblers are necessary to confirm our results.
ISSN:1022-6877
1421-9891
DOI:10.1159/000253861