Behavioral phenotyping of impulsivity with a dynamic decision-making task

mpulsivity is a multidimensional construct that represents a well-known vulnerability factor for a variety of clinical disorders including addiction, problem gambling, and other forms of compulsive behavior. In the laboratory, impulsivity is typically measured with a variety of behavioral tasks including go/no-go paradigms and the Iowa Gambling Task, whereas researchers and practitioners in the clinical domain often rely primarily on self-reported psychometric batteries. One example is the widely-used UPPS Impulsivity Scale (Whiteside & Lynam, 2001, Pers. & Indiv. Diff.), which partitions impulsivity into five sub-factors including Positive- and Negative Urgency, (Lack of) Premeditation, (Lack of) Perseverance, and Sensation-Seeking. However, recent meta-analyses have revealed that behavioral- and self-report measures of impulsivity account for separate sources of individual variance in impulsivity-related traits, suggesting that these assessment measures are tapping into distinct and non-overlapping dimensions within a broader underlying construct (Cyders & Coskunpinar, 2012, J. Res. Personality). This lack of agreement between measurement approaches thus represents an outstanding challenge to the utility of impulsivity as an explanatory construct in conceptual and clinical domains alike. Here we present a novel dynamic decision-making task that yields a variety of discrete behavioral measures related to individual differences in risk- and reward sensitivity, response inhibition, and speed-accuracy preferences. We also report initial findings regarding the relationship of these performance measures to various sub-factors of the UPPS impulsivity scale, thereby bridging the gap between behavioral and self-report measures of impulsivity. We conclude that this task offers the possibility to develop more precise cognitive-behavioral phenotypes of impulsivity, as well as to clarify the potential contributions of these phenotypes to a variety of clinical disorders