Modeling Skin Conductance Response Time Series during Consecutive Rapid Decision-Making under Concurrent Temporal Pressure and Information Ambiguity

Abstract

Emergency situations promote risk-taking behaviors associated with anxiety reactivity. A previous study using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has demonstrated that prespecified state anxiety predicts moderate risk-taking (middle-risk/high-return) after salient penalty events under temporal pressure and information ambiguity. Such moderate risk-taking can be used as a behavioral background in the case of fraud damage. We conducted two psychophysiological experiments using the IGT and used a psychophysiological modeling approach to examine how moderate risk-taking under temporal pressure and information ambiguity is associated with automatic physiological responses, such as a skin conductance response (SCR). The first experiment created template SCR functions under concurrent temporal pressure and information ambiguity. The second experiment produced a convolution model using the SCR functions and fitted the model to the SCR time series recorded under temporal pressure and no temporal pressure, respectively. We also collected the participants’ anxiety profiles before the IGT experiment. The first finding indicated that participants with higher state anxiety scores yielded better model fitting (that is, event-related physiological responses) under temporal pressure. The second finding demonstrated that participants with better model fitting made consecutive Deck A selections under temporal pressure more frequently. In summary, a psychophysiological modeling approach is effective for capturing overlapping SCRs and moderate risk-taking under concurrent temporal pressure and information ambiguity is associated with automatic physiological and emotional reactivity.