Real versus facsimile reinforcers on the Iowa Gambling Task

The Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994) is an effective neuropsychological tool for the assessment of ‘real-life’ decision-making in a laboratory environment. It has been employed in a wide range of circumstances, though researchers have sometimes employed real money reinforcers instead of the facsimile (or ‘monopoly’-type) money used by Bechara et al. (1994). The present study investigated whether the type of reinforcer produced any differences in performance. There were no significant differences between the two conditions, though the Facsimile Money condition produced a greater range (and a higher standard deviation) than the Real Money condition. This finding is especially important when considering the Gambling Task as a tool in clinical neuropsychology—where there are risks, at the individual subject level, of both false positive and false negative classification errors.