Taxing executive processes does not necessarily increase impulsive decision making

Abstract

A link has been established between impulsivity in real-world situations and impulsive decision making in laboratory tasks in brain-damaged patients and individuals with substance abuse. Whether or not this link exists for all individuals is less clear. We conducted an experiment to determine whether taxing central executive processes with a demanding cognitive load task results in impulsive decision making in a normal sample. Participants (n = 53) completed a delay discounting task under the presence (load condition) and absence (control condition) of a demanding generation task. Results indicated that taxing working memory is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce impulsive decision making; instead, the demanding generation task resulted in an increase in the number of inconsistent choices.