Risky decision making and illegal drug use among regular tobacco and alcohol users: Cognitive modeling analysis of the Iowa Gambling Task
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Liu, Ying-Chun
Abstract
Substance users tend to pay more attention to short-term gains yet neglect long-term losses. Performance deficits on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which is widely used to measure such risky decision-making, have been found among drug abusers. However, it remains rarely known about whether such risky decision-making is present among subjects who are still in the early stage of their illegal drug use career. This study aimed to examine the associations between the magnitude of substance usage and decision-making characteristics as measured on the IGT using reinforcement learning models by comparing tobacco- and drug-naive controls (N = 45), regular tobacco and alcohol users (N = 185), and illegal/non-prescription drug users (N = 55), with stratification by gender. Study subjects were the participants recruited via respondent-driven sampling (RDS) among regular tobacco and alcohol users in Taipei metropolitan area in Taiwan in 2008, 2009, and 2010. We used the Prospect-Valence Learning model to estimate three main latent components in decision-making, i.e., individuals’ loss aversion (less risky tendency), learning ability, and choice consistency in trials, with Bayesian hierarchical estimation procedure implemented. The results showed that 1) illegal/non-prescription drug users learned less from the most recent event than both tobacco- and drug-naive controls and regular tobacco and alcohol users; 2) drug users and regular tobacco and alcohol users were more risk-seeking than tobacco- and drug-naive controls; 3) regular tobacco and alcohol users made choices more randomly than the other two groups, particularly in men. These results reveal that drug users in relatively early stage of their drug use career could be differentiated from legal substance users by cognitive modeling parameters. These drug users may have lower learning ability in the most recent event and be more obstinate of their relatively risky choices. The regular tobacco and alcohol users may make risky decisions, but change their decisions as a result of being more influenced by the most recent event. The tobacco- and drug-naive subjects are more fixed on their non-risky choices. These results have useful implications for the prevention and intervention of drug use.
Subjects
Iowa Gambling Task
substance use
drug use
decision making
cognitive model
Bayesian estimation
risk seeking
SDGs
Type
thesis
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