A Critical Review of the False Dichotomy Surrounding the Iowa Gambling Task. Technical Report 2016-01

The debate surrounding how emotion and c ognition are organized in the brain often lead s to Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis. This theory endorses a highly interactive process between emotion and cognition, but has been criticized for being too broad to capture the specific links between the t wo. It also implies that emotion operates from a neural architecture that is dissociable from cognition. Although empirical findings from the Iowa Gambling Task lend support for the theory, this can promote a false dichotomy between emotion and cognition. Issues will be raised regarding the view that the theory and the task are ill - formulated to account for the phases of decision making. Further theoretical work may be required to align the task with Damasio’s view of emotion as integrated with cognition.