Papers by Bettina Preuschoff
Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2011
Emotions and their psychophysiological correlates are thought to play an important role in decisi... more Emotions and their psychophysiological correlates are thought to play an important role in decision-making under risk. We used a novel gambling task to measure psychophysiological responses during selection of explicitly presented risky options and feedback processing. Active-choice trials, in which the participant had to select the size of bet, were compared to fixed-bet, no-choice trials. We further tested how the chances of winning and bet size affected choice behavior and psychophysiological arousal. Individual differences in impulsive and risk-taking traits were assessed. The behavioral results showed sensitivity to the choice requirement and to the chances of winning: Participants were faster to make a response on no-choice trials and when the chances of winning were high. In active-choice trials, electrodermal activity (EDA) increased with bet size during both selection and processing of losses. Cardiac responses were sensitive to choice uncertainty: Stronger selection-related heart rate (HR) decelerations were observed in trials with lower chances of winning, particularly on active-choice trials. Finally, betting behavior and psychophysiological responsiveness were moderately correlated with self-reported impulsivity-related traits. In conclusion, we demonstrate that psychophysiological arousal covaries with risk-sensitive decision-making outside of a learning context. Our results further highlight the differential sensitivities of EDA and HR to psychological features of the decision scenario.
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Papers by Bettina Preuschoff