Risk-taking and Impulsive Behaviors: a Comparative Assessment of Three Tasks

We examined the reliability of, and relationships among, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), the Delay Discounting Task (DDT), and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), with a group of healthy Chinese young adults. The BART and the DDT showed moderate to high test-retest reliability across 3 test sessions conducted at 2-weekly intervals. However, the IGT showed low reliability for session 1 but high reliability for sessions 2 and 3. Between tasks, there were significant correlations only for the BART and the IGT and only for session 2 and session 3. These findings support the view that impulsivity is a complex construct with no single personality trait underlying the disposition for impulsive behaviors.