Decision Making in Alcohol Dependence: Insensitivity to Future Consequences and Comorbid Disinhibitory PsychopathologyAlcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research Published Online: 28 Jun 2008
Alcohol dependence (AD) is often comorbid with other disinhibitory disorders that are characterized by poor decision making and evidenced by disadvantageous strategies on laboratory tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT).
In this study, a variant of the IGT is used to examine specific mechanisms that may account for poor decision making on the task in AD both with and without comorbid psychopathology.
Both AD and CCD were associated with greater IFC but not greater PLvS. Structural equation models (SEMs) indicated that IFC was associated with higher scores on a latent dimensional "disinhibitory disorders" factor representing the covariance among all lifetime measures of disinhibitory psychopathology, but was not directly related to any one disinhibitory disorder. SEMs also suggested that adult antisocial behavior was uniquely associated with a greater PLvS.
Disadvantageous decision making on the IGT in those with AD and related disinhibitory disorders may reflect an IFC that is common to the covariance among these disorders but not unique to any one disorder.
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