Browsing by Author "McRae, Kateri"

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    Enhancing cognitive control of our decisions: Making the most of humor during the IGT in females and males
    (2024) Flores-Torres, Jorge; McRae, Kateri; Campos-Arteaga, German; Gomez-Perez, Lydia
    We studied the impact of humor on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) decision-making performance and the cognitive control exerted during this task, considering sex as a moderator, and examined whether cognitive control mediated the influence of humor on decision-making. Sixty participants (30 females) performed an extended version of the IGT (500 trials divided into 20 blocks). We randomly assigned them to either an experimental group (Humor Group; Hg; n = 30), where humorous videos were interspersed in the decision-making trials or a control group (Non-Humor Group; NHg; n = 30), where nonhumorous videos were interspersed in the decision-making trials. We recorded participant performance and feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3b event-related potentials (ERP) during IGT feedback as task monitoring and attention allocation indicators, respectively. We expected that whereas humor would improve IGT decision-making under risk in females during the last blocks (17-20) as well as cognitive control (specifically attention allocation and task monitoring) across the entire IGT, it would impair them in males. Contrary to our expectations, humor improved IGT decision-making under risk for both sexes (specifically at blocks 19 and 20) and attention allocation for most IGT blocks (P3b amplitudes). However, humor impaired IGT decision-making under ambiguity in males during the block six and task monitoring (FRN amplitudes) for most IGT blocks. Attention allocation did not mediate the beneficial effect of humor on decision-making under risk in either sex. Task monitoring decrements fully mediated the humor's detrimental influence on men's decision-making under ambiguity during block six.
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    Humor Improves Women's but Impairs Men's Iowa Gambling Task Performance
    (2019) Flores-Torres, Jorge; Gomez-Perez, Lydia; McRae, Kateri; Lopez, Vladimir; Rubio, Ivan; Rodriguez, Eugenio
    The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a popular method for examining real-life decision-making. Research has shown gender related differences in performance, in that men consistently outperform women. It has been suggested that these performance differences are related to decreased emotional control in women compared to men. Given the likely role of emotion in these gender differences, in the present study, we examine the effect of a humor induction on IGT performance and whether the effect of humor is moderated by gender. IGT performance and parameters from the Expectancy Valence Model (EVM) were measured in 68 university students (34 men; mean age 22.02, SD = 4.3 and 34 women; mean age 22.3, SD = 4.1) during a 100 trial-IGT task. Participants were exposed to a brief video before each of the IGT decisions available; one half of the samples (17 men and 17 women) was exposed to 100 humor videos, while the other half was exposed to 100 non-humor videos during the task. We observed a significant interaction between gender and humor, such that under humor, women's performance during the last block (trials 80-100) improved (compared to women under non-humor), whereas men's performance during the last block was worse (compared to men under non-humor). Consistent with previous work, under non-humor, men outperformed women in the last block. Lastly, our EVM results show that humor impacts the learning mechanisms of decision-making differently in men and women. Humor impaired men's ability to acquire knowledge about the payoff structure of the decks, and as a consequence, they were stuck in suboptimal performance. On the other hand, humor facilitated women's ability to explore and to learn from experience, improving performance. These findings deepen our understanding of the mechanisms underlying IGT decision-making and differential effects of humor in men and women.
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    Positive cognitive reappraisal is beneficial for women's but not for men's IGT decision-making
    (2022) Flores-Torres, Jorge; Gomez-Perez, Lydia; McRae, Kateri
    Real-life decision-making involves a balance between emotion and cognition, a process that is mirrored in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Previous studies suggest that negative emotion affects IGT performance, and that this effect may be moderated by gender. In the current study, we experimentally instructed the use of a strategy for ameliorating the incidental negative emotion induced by negative images while men and women solved the IGT. To do this, we asked 38 men and 38 women to either only look at negative images (non-reappraisal group) or to use positive cognitive reappraisal when facing these negative images (reappraisal group) to ameliorate the negative emotion associated with them while trying to solve the IGT. Both men and women in the reappraisal group successfully used positive reappraisal to decrease their negative emotion compared to the control, non-reappraisal group. Critically, we observed that women performed better in the reappraisal group compared with the non-reappraisal group, in the second half of the task (performance phase). Conversely, men performed worse in the reappraisal group compared to the non-reappraisal group in the second half of the task (performance phase). Finally, a multigroup analysis revealed a gender moderation of the direct and indirect effects of positive reappraisal on IGT performance, indicating that reappraisal benefited women's IGT performance through the regulation of negative emotion. Conversely, for men, the decrease of negative emotion through reappraisal did not impact IGT performance. Our results demonstrate that while the use of positive reappraisal is useful to ameliorate negative emotions for men and women, positive reappraisal benefits women's decision-making, and impairs men's.