Failure to utilize feedback during explicit decision-making task in alcohol-dependent patients

Patients who are diagnosed with alcohol-dependent syndrome (ADS) are shown to have neuropsychological deficits, especially executive function (EF) deficits. Among the EFs, decision-making is one such function which has consistently been shown to be impaired in people who are dependent on alcohol, compared to controls. Decision-making in this population is usually assessed with gambling-type tasks. However, some of these tasks are ambiguous, work on chance factors, rarely match with real-life gambling situations, and/or involve nonconscious mechanisms.

The current study compared 26 male patients with ADS (P-ADS) with equal number of their nonalcohol-dependent male siblings on sensation seeking and explicit gambling task (EGT). EGT is similar to the Iowa gambling task in administration, but varies from it as it involves a single outcome and provides unambiguous, explicit, and continuous feedback for the participants.

The results did not show any significant relationship between decision-making variables and sensation seeking. However, despite unambiguous, explicit, and continuous feedback, patients showed significantly poor decision-making as compared to the siblings of the P-ADS group. This study throws light on why people who are addicted to alcohol have difficulties in decision-making, despite knowing the adverse effects.