Lowa Gambling Task (LGT) using Psychopy

Author: Chengran

Date created: November 14, 2020

This experiment was based on the decision making task of Wemm and Wulfert's (2017) ¹ research, which is a replication of Bechara and colleagues' (1994) ² original paper on LGT. This experiment has 100 trials. The schedule of card as stated by Shurman and colleagues (2017) ³:

In deck A, the penalties are frequent and range from 100 to ​350, while in deck B the penalties are infrequent but of larger magnitude (1250). By picking preferentially from decks A and B, subjects will incur a net loss over time. In deck C the penalties are frequent and range from 25 to 75, while in deck D the penalties are infrequent but of larger magnitude ($250). By picking preferentially from decks C and D, a subject will incur a net gain over time.

Note: This experiment was build on a virtual machine of Windows 10 under macOS Catalina Version 10.15.7. The version of Psychopy is 2020.1.3.

Change log 2020-11-15: Minor bugs fixed.

Footnotes

1. Wemm, S. E., & Wulfert, E. (2017). Effects of acute stress on decision making. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 42(1), 1-12.. ↩

2. Bechara, A., Damasio, A., Damasio, H., & Anderson, S. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following dam- age to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50(1–3), 7–15. ↩

3. Shurman, B., Horan, W. P., & Nuechterlein, K. H. (2005). Schizo- phrenia patients demonstrate a distinctive pattern of decision- making impairment on the Iowa Gambling Task. Schizophrenia Research. ↩