Effect of emotional distracters on cognitive decision-making in Cambridge gambling task

Abstract

Human decision-making has been investigated under two frameworks: cognitive and emotional decision-making. Cognitive decision-making is a choice behavior in the risky situation, in which the payoff and the probability of each option are explicit and calculable. This form of decision-making has been considered to be performed without emotional influence. Although recent works have revealed the importance of the emotion in human decision-making, emotional effect on cognitive decisionmaking is yet unknown. To examine whether cognitive decision-making is affected by emotional distracters, we implemented a secondary task requiring short-term memory of an emotional word in the Cambridge gambling task (CGT). Although the quality and the quickness of decision-making were not affected by emotional distracters, the amount of bet was significantly higher in trials requiring positive word memorization. These results indicate that some processes of cognitive decision-making are affected by emotion.