Overweight and Normal-Weight Children’s Decision-Making in a Child Variant of the Iowa Gambling Task

In the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), overweight as compared to normal-weight adults make more risky decisions resulting in immediate rewards and long-term losses. Findings regarding a potentially moderating role of gender have been inconsistent and investigations on the development of weight-group differences in decision-making during childhood are lacking. Using a 3-wave longitudinal study, we examined decision-making in a matched sample of 94 overweight and 94 normal-weight children (49% girls, aged 6–9 years at wave 1) over a 3-year period. Decision-making was measured with the Hungry Donkey Task (HDT), an age-appropriate version of the IGT, and learning within the task was examined via analysis across trial blocks. Mixed-design ANOVA revealed that more risky decisions were made by overweight as compared to normal-weight children and by girls as compared to boys. Within-task learning was evident at all three waves, moderated by weight group and gender. However, although risky decisions generally decreased across the 3-year period, weight-group and gender differences did not significantly change over the 3-year period. Our findings demonstrate that weight-group and gender differences in decision-making are already present and do not significantly change over a 3-year period in middle childhood.