Abstract

This study compared the performance of Iowa Gambling Task(IGT) of 21 suicide attempters with that of 22 healthy controls and 24 clinical controls to examine the suicide attempter’s decision-making ability. For the IGT total net score, clinical controls showed a significant decrease in the number of advantageous card selection compared to healthy controls. Although the suicide attempter showed similar performance to the clinical controls, the total net score difference from healthy controls was not significant. The result of repeated measure ANOVA revealed that only healthy controls showed an increase in preferences for advantageous card deck toward the end of the block. The choice pattern of the three groups was compared based on the ORL model, which proved to be the best model for explaining the card selection of three groups. Suicide attempters had lower sensitivity to reward and punishment than healthy controls. On the other hand, the discount rate of past choices was higher among the suicide attempters than among the healthy controls, which suggests that suicide attempters tended to forget past choice quickly regardless of whether the result of the previous choice was positive or negative. Finally, the implications and limitations of the results of the study are discussed, and directions for the future research are suggested.