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.