Construct Validity of the Iowa Gambling Task

Overview

Journal Neuropsychol Rev

Specialties Neurology
Psychology

Date 2009 Feb 6

PMID 19194801

Citations 149

Authors

Melissa T Buelow

Julie A Suhr

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) was created to assess real-world decision making in a laboratory setting and has been applied to various clinical populations (i.e., substance abuse, schizophrenia, pathological gamblers) outside those with orbitofrontal cortex damage, for whom it was originally developed. The current review provides a critical examination of lesion, functional neuroimaging, developmental, and clinical studies in order to examine the construct validity of the IGT. The preponderance of evidence provides support for the use of the IGT to detect decision making deficits in clinical populations, in the context of a more comprehensive evaluation. The review includes a discussion of three critical issues affecting the validity of the IGT, as it has recently become available as a clinical instrument: the lack of a concise definition as to what aspect of decision making the IGT measures, the lack of data regarding reliability of the IGT, and the influence of personality and state mood on IGT performance.

Citing Articles

Differential susceptibility effects of the and genotypes on decision making under risk in the Iowa gambling task.

Rehn M, Nilsson K, Hultman C, Vadlin S, Aslund C Front Psychiatry. 2025; 16:1456490.

PMID: 40046992 PMC: 11880251. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1456490.

Individual differences in training time in the rat gambling task are unrelated to subsequent decision-making strategies.

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Iowa Gambling Task performance in individuals with schizophrenia: the role of general versus specific cognitive abilities.

Orm S, Oie M, Haugen I Front Psychiatry. 2024; 15:1454276.

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SK609, a novel dopamine D3 receptor agonist and norepinephrine transporter blocker with putative pro-cognitive actions, does not induce psychostimulant-like increases in risky choice during probabilistic discounting.

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