The 'Cards Task' is a gambling task designed by Agatha Anet. In this task, participants are presented with two cards that they can 'choose' from, but the outcome they will receive is decided deterministically. This allows the experimenter to manipulate the outcomes: in the second ten trials, all of the outcomes are losses, no matter what the choice. Participants are told how far through the task they are at the end of each run of trails, and asked how many points they anticipate having at the end - the key outcome variable is their mean estimated points, which we hypothesised would relate to mental health variables. Participants are also asked how many points they think they obtained in the preceding block, to allow individual differences in mental arithmetic/point-tallying to be controlled for.
Built with Task Builder 1
Participants will choose between two cards shown on screen, and will receive points (which can be positive or negative) for each choice. These points are deterministic, and do not depend on the choice made by the participant (i.e., they would get the same points total regardless of what they chose). Participants are asked to use their knowledge of the points they have gained on each 'block' (set of ten trials) to estimate how many points they will have by the end of the task, and will also be asked for their confidence in these estimates.
The task includes 50 trials. Every 10 trials participants are told how far through the task they are and answer the questions: “How many points did you win in this block?” and “How many points will you have by the end of this task?”, which they answer using a visual analogue scale ranging from -600 to +600 with a step size of 10. After each question they are also asked: “How confident are you that you estimated the right amount of points?” to which they answer on a continuous visual analogue scale from ‘not confident at all’ to ‘really confident’. In particular, the second ten trials (trials 11-20) will all be loss trials, in which the participant will lose points.
Instructions: “You will be asked to choose between the cards presented to you. Each card will either give you points or take some points away. The goal of this game is to earn as many points as you can. You should try to keep track of your score in your head.”
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