Impulsivity and decision making in the balloon analogue risk-taking task

It is not clear whether impulsivity is related to decision-making processes. Although recent studies have proposed that these kinds of processes are not related to impulsivity, most of them have focused only on certain dimensions of impulsivity such as “narrow impulsivity” and not taken into account other dimensions such as functional impulsivity or venturesomeness. Using Dickman’s model of dysfunctional and functional impulsivity we have analysed the relationships between measures of these dimensions, the dimensions measured by the I7 questionnaire, and various parameters of the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking Task (BART). The BART is a widely used measure of risk-taking propensity which we have modified in order to manipulate the risk associated with the task. The results obtained show that neither dysfunctional impulsivity nor narrow impulsivity are related to decision processes in this task while functional impulsivity is related to an “impulsive decision-making” style only in the low risk condition. Venturesomeness also showed a significant relationship with BART results in the low risk condition, although partial correlation analysis suggested that these results are mainly due to functional impulsivity.