Abstract
This study examined whether gambling behavior under conditions of diminishing returns differed between participants with histories of contingent (CD group) and noncontingent (NCD group) token delivery. In Phase 1, CD participants accrued tokens by correctly completing a discrimination task; for NCD participants, token accrual was yoked to token delivery of CD participants. In Phase 2, participants could choose to gamble their tokens or end the experiment and exchange their tokens for money. During the gambling task, participants could bet 1 token per trial. The probability of losses began at 10 % and increased incrementally across blocks of 10 trials up to 100 %. Overall, participants in the CD group gambled on fewer trials than participants in the NCD group. Costs of token accrual during Phase 1, in terms of number of trials and duration, showed a positive correlation with net tokens for the CD group but not the NCD group. Results are consistent with previous research demonstrating the value-enhancing effects of both prior contingent delivery and effort, and offer evidence that these histories influence sensitivity to loss.
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Acknowledgments
Completion of this study was supported by Grants R01 HD049753 and P01 HD055456 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NICHD.
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This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Miller, J.R., DeLeon, I.G., Toole, L.M. et al. Contingency Enhances Sensitivity to Loss in a Gambling Task with Diminishing Returns. Psychol Rec 66, 301–308 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-016-0172-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-016-0172-5