Event-related potentials in response to feedback following risk-taking in the hot version of the Columbia Card Task

Given the importance of risk-taking in individuals' personal and professional life, several behavioral tasks for measuring the construct have been developed. Recently, a new task was introduced, the Columbia Card Task (CCT). This task measures participants' risk levels and establishes how sensitive participants are to gains, losses, and probabilities when taking risk. So far, the CCT has been examined in behavioral studies and in combination with several (neuro)biological techniques. However, no electroencephalography (EEG) research has been done on the task. The present study fills this gap and helps to validate this relatively new experimental task. To this end, n = 126 students were asked to complete self-reports (reward responsiveness, impulsiveness, and sensation-seeking) and to perform the CCT (and other risk tasks) in an EEG setup. The results show that feedback appraisal after risky decision-making in the CCT was accompanied by a feedback-related negativity (FRN) and a P300, which were stronger in response to negative than positive feedback. Correlations between the FRN and P300 difference wave on the one hand and risk-related self-reports and behavior on the other were nonsignificant and small, but were mostly in the expected direction. This pattern did not change after excluding participants with psychiatric/neurological disorders and outliers. Excluding participants with reversed (positive > negative) difference waves strengthened FRN correlations. The impact such individuals can have on the data should be taken into account in future studies. Regarding the CCT in particular, future studies should also address its oddball structure and its masking of true values (censoring).