Addiction and drug abuse have been problems for decades e'g' cocaine addiction, binge eating etc' Th

1
Links between Cognitive Task Performance and
Impulsive Personality Measures Sylvia Sng Mentor
Angus MacDonald III, PhD Department of
Psychology, University of Minnesota sngxx001_at_umn.e
du
Background
Results

• Thus, running the subjects through the reversal
  learning tasks will allow us to examine the
  different performance of those with high or low
  impulsivity personality measures in reward
  learning and behavior adaptation according to
  changes in stimulus-reward contingencies.
• Hypothesis Participants with higher BAS scores
  and/or higher BIS scores would perform better in
  the reversal learning task.

• Addiction and drug abuse have been problems for
  decades e.g. cocaine addiction, binge eating etc.
  This is strongly linked to impulsive disorders
  in patients.
• Thus, to develop effective interventions for the
  treatment and prevention of addictive disorders,
  it is important to first understand the
  neurobiology of inhibitors. One aspect is to
  investigate the specific aspects of context
  processing deficiencies related to impulsive
  disorders through examining the relationships
  between the tasks and participants high and low
  on impulsive personality measures.
• There are two things that are being examined the
  results from the BIS (Behavioral Inhibition
  System) / BAS (Behavioral Activation System)
  Measures and the Reversal Learning tasks from the
  CSIA (Center for Study of Impulsivity in
  Addiction) battery in the TRiCAM (Translational
  Research in Cognitive and Affective Mechanism)
  lab.

Methods
Fig. 2
Fig. 1
Fig. 2

• Participants 46 undergraduates at the U of M (23
  females, 22 males, mean age19.96)
• Part 1 Personality questionnaires
• Participants were asked to answer personality
  questionnaires. Two of the scales that were in
  the questionnaires are the BIS and BAS
  personality scales.
• Those personality scales were chosen for analysis
  because subjects from the CSIA battery conducted
  in both N439 Elliott Hall and the SBSL in
  Anderson Hall took questionnaires with this
  scales thus providing more subjects for analysis.
  
• Examples of the items in the BIS scale and the
  subscales in the BAS scale
• BISI worry about making mistakes criticism and
  scolding hurt me a bit.
• BAS Drive I go out of my way to get things I
  want If I see a chance to get something I want I
  move on it right away.
• BAS Fun Seeking I crave excitement and new
  sensations I'm always willing to try something
  new if I think it will be fun.
• BAS Reward Responsiveness When I'm doing well at
  something I love to keep at it It would excite
  me to win a contest.

• Results from the independent samples t-test
  showed no significant difference between genders.
  Mean percentage of accurate trials underwent is
  71.12 and the mean reaction time of response to
  each pair of stimulus 685.82 ms.
• The correlation between the percentage of
  accurate trials underwent with BIS score is 0.389
  (p-valuelt0.01) (Fig. 1). The correlation between
  the mean reaction time of response to each pair
  of stimulus with the BAS Fun Seeking Scores is
  -0.299 (p-valuelt0.05).
• There are no significant results for the
  correlation between percentage of accurate trials
  underwent with BAS Drive, BAS Fun Seeking, BAS
  Reward Responsiveness, and BAS Total and the
  correlation between mean reaction time of
  response to each pair of stimulus with BIS, BAS
  Drive, BAS Reward Responsiveness, and BAS Total.

• Impulsive Personality Measures BIS/BAS Scales
• According to Grays Theory of Brain Functions and
  Behavior, there are two dimensions of
  personality anxiety and impulsivity. Each
  represents individual differences in the
  sensitivity of BIS and BAS in their responses to
  relevant environmental cues (Gray, 1972, 1981
  Fowles, 1987, 1993 )
• People usually have a combination of high and low
  BIS/BAS
• Impulsiveness, a quality of behavior that many
  theorists have related conceptually to BIS and
  BAS activity, reflects high levels of BAS
  activity, as the person is drawn strongly to
  desired stimuli, and low levels of BIS activity,
  as the person displays inability to restrain
  impulses in the face of impending punishment
  (Carver White, 1994)

Discussion

• It was hypothesized that participants with
  higher BIS scores would perform better in
  reversal learning task. This hypothesis is
  supported by the finding that the percentage of
  accurate trials underwent positively correlates
  with the BIS scores.
• This is most likely due to the reason that those
  participants would be more careful in making
  their choices, not being impulsive about them,
  and would more likely take up a strategy in
  handling this task.
• In addition, participants with higher BAS scores
  would perform better in reversal learning task.
  This is supported by the result that shows the
  negative correlation between the mean reaction
  time of response to each pair of stimulus with
  the BAS Fun Seeking Scores.
• As higher BAS scores would imply higher
  sensitivity to rewards, the participants are more
  likely to be better at reward learning in this
  task.
• There are also limitations in this research. Due
  to time constraint, limited number of subjects
  are used in the data analysis. As the research
  progresses and more subjects are tested, it is
  predicted that significant results will be
  attained from the other correlations.
• There are many other impulsive personality scales
  that are not included in the data analysis. It
  is because there are less subjects that have
  answered questionnaires with those scales, and at
  the same time have done the reversal learning
  task. Therefore, the links between cognitive
  task performance and the impulsive personality
  measures will be more clearly established when
  more data that will be collected are analyzed.

• Part 2 Reversal Learning Task
• Participants are presented with two visual
  patterns simultaneously on the left and right
  side of a computer screen.
• Using trial and error and feedback, participants
  must discover which of the two patterns is
  correct.
• Feedback (correct/incorrect) is presented as soon
  as the subject has chosen one of the patterns by
  pressing the left or right button on the button
  box.
• The reversal of the stimulus-reward contingency
  occurs after 9/10 correct responses in a row.
  This includes the probabilistic errors.
• Probabilistic error is the incorrect feedback
  that a subject receives although (s)he picked the
  correct pattern.
• The purpose of probabilistic error is to prevent
  participants from adopting a strategy such as
  always reversing after two consecutive errors.
• There are 3 blocks that each last about 5
  minutes. The stimuli were presented for 6000 msec
  within which the response has to be made or a no
  response message would be presented.
• If the participants fail to make any reversals
  (total reversal per block 2) in the particular
  block, they will still proceed to the next block
  after 50 trials.
• Participants data from the Reversal Learning
  Task and their results in the BIS/BAS section of
  the personality questionnaires were analyzed and
  compared.
• Correlation analyses were done between percentage
  of accurate trials underwent and mean reaction
  time of participants response to each pair of
  stimulus with BIS, BAS Drive, BAS Fun Seeking,
  Bas Reward Responsiveness, and BAS Total.

• Cognitive Task Performance Reversal Learning
  Task
• Reversal learning is the learning that involves
  the adaptation of behavior according to changes
  in stimulus-reward contingencies, a capacity
  relevant to socio-emotional behavior (Rolls,
  1999)
• It is exemplified by visual discrimination tasks
  where subjects must learn to respond to the
  opposite, previously irrelevant, stimulus-reward
  pairing
• The areas in the brain found to be involved in
  reversal learning are ventral prefrontal cortex
  (PFC) and ventral striatum (VS) shown by an fMRI
  study by Cools et al. (2002) in which there was
  recruitment of a ventral frontostriatal system in
  a task of probabilistic reversal learning.
• Previous neuroimaging studies have associated the
  ventral PFC and VS with a variety of functions
  related indirectly to reversal learning including
  unconditioned and conditioned reward processing
  and low-level inhibitory control (Cools et al.
  2002).

Special Thanks to The Undergraduate Research
Opportunities Program (UROP), Stephen Duquette,
Megan Rozman, and the TRiCAM Laboratory