Socioeconomic Status Differences in Children?s Affective Decision-Making: The Role of Awareness in the Children?s Gambling Task

DELGADO, HERNAN; ALDECOSEA, CARINA; RODRIGUEZ, RICHARD; NIN, VERONICA; LIPINA, SEBASTIAN J.; CARBONI, ALEJANDRA

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

American Psychological Asssociation

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2022

0012-1649

Future-oriented decision-making is an important adaptive behavior. In the present study, weexamined whether decision-making varies as a function of socioeconomic status (SES) using theChildren?s Gambling Task (CGT). We administered the CGT to 227 children (49% female, 48%low SES) between the ages of 5 and 7 years. After completing the CGT, we assessed children?sknowledge of the reward/loss contingencies. Data analysis was conducted through multilevelmodeling. Fluid intelligence, as measured by the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, was included asa covariate in the analysis. Overall performance differed between SES groups. Children frommiddle/high-SES backgrounds learned to choose more from the deck with higher future rewards.In contrast, children in the low-SES group did not act in a full future-oriented manner. Nodifferences were found in the level of explicit understanding of the task reached by the two SESgroups. Whereas middle/high-SES children with higher knowledge of the game performed betteron the last blocks of the task in comparison with their same-SES peers with no understanding,low-SES children with higher explicit knowledge did not exhibit an improvement in theirdecision-making strategy in comparison with their same-SES low-awareness counterparts. Fluidintelligence did not predict CGT performance, suggesting that SES differences were notmediated by reasoning capabilities. The finding that children from low-SES families continuedexhibiting an immediate reward-oriented strategy despite being aware of deck contingencies fitswith (although speculatively) the evolutionary-developmental framework.