Gambling as an executive function task.

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994) was investigated in relation to fluid intelligence and two conventional executive function tasks: letter fluency and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Fifty-one children aged 8-10 years and a heterogeneous group of 40 adults served as participants. Adults outperformed children on all measures except one; this was the number of good cards selected in the IGT. Intercorrelations among executive function tasks were low. The number of good cards in the IGT appeared to be lower than in previous studies. Reasons for poor performance are discussed. The IGT may possess some shortcomings, which should be investigated in future studies. In clinical usage, the IGT may best serve as a complementary tool to the executive functions test battery.