Do general intellectual functioning and socioeconomic status account for performance on the Children's Gambling Task?

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

• Affective decision-making develops rapidly in early childhood.
• Individual differences in decision-making emerge during the preschool years.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) and general intellectual functioning on affective decision-making in preschoolers.
• To examine age-related changes in affective decision-making using the Children's Gambling Task (CGT).

Main Methods:

• Administered the computerized Children's Gambling Task (CGT) to 137 Brazilian children aged 3-5 years.
• Assessed general intellectual functioning using the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale (CMMS).
• Evaluated socioeconomic status (SES) using the Brazilian Criterion of Economic Classification (CCEB).

Main Results:

• Affective decision-making showed significant development between ages 3 and 4, but not between 4 and 5.
• Children aged 4 and 5 performed significantly above chance on later CGT blocks, unlike 3-year-olds.
• High socioeconomic status (SES) children outperformed low SES children on the final CGT block, indicating better utilization of reward/penalty information.

Conclusions:

• Affective decision-making undergoes rapid development in preschoolers, particularly between ages 3 and 4.
• Socioeconomic status (SES), not general intellectual functioning, is associated with improved affective decision-making skills in early childhood.
• High SES may facilitate the development of advantageous decision-making strategies in young children.