Electrophysiological Correlates of Cue-Related Processing in a Gambling Task: Early Outcome Evaluation or Outcome Expectation?

Several recent studies have suggested that cues that predict outcomes elicit a feedback-related-like negativity (FRN-like negativity) reflecting initial appraisals of whether desired outcomes are probable. Some other studies, however, have found that the cues that predict outcomes elicited event-related potentials (ERPs) that reflect the expectation to outcomes (e.g., outcome expectations). Given these mixed findings, this study aimed to examine whether the brain activity elicited by predictive cues in a gambling task reflected the initial evaluations of the outcomes, the outcome expectations, or both. We used a gambling task in which the participants were told to guess which of two doors hid a reward. At the beginning of each trial, a cue was presented to inform the participants of how many doors hid a reward. We found that these predictive cues elicited a FRN-like negativity at the frontal sites within around 200–300 ms. However, this negativity did not significantly differ between the cues that fully predicted gains and the cues that fully predicted losses. Furthermore, predictive cues elicited an expectation-related slow wave, and cues that predicted gains with a 50% probability elicited a larger expectation-related slow wave than cues that fully predicted gains or losses. Our results suggest that cues predicting outcomes reflect outcome expectations rather than initial evaluations of the forthcoming outcomes.