Abstract: Affective decision making is an individual ability to make choice under risk and uncertainty. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) developed by Bechara has been widely used to assess decision behavior under uncertainty. The original IGT was designed to examine the decision making that is profitable in the future. In IGT participants have to develop a long-term profitable monetary scenario in a situation of uncertainty and a conflict between the chance of encountering an immediate large reward (US$100) in two long-term loosing decks (A and B; US$250 per10 cards) and the chance of encountering an immediate small reward (US$50) in two long-term winning decks (C and D; US$+250 per 10 cards). According to the research, it is found that normal adults choose more from the good decks while individuals with pre-frontal ventromedial cortex (VM-PFC) never learned to choose more from the good decks. Bechara consider that patients with VM-PFC opting for choices that yield high immediate gains in spite of higher future losses. While there is a large amount of research on the IGT in the adult population, there is less work done on children. In order to examine whether young children would show a similar preference for immediate prospects, the modification IGT adopted considering children unique features.
Basically, development of affective decision making was studied in 120 children at the age of 3 and 5 using modified IGT. Results shows young children are inclined to make advantageous choices, in particular, when the probability of punishment is higher. Children act sensitively towards the frequency of rewards and punishments. Compared with the age of 3 and 4, the study also implies that the age of 4 and 5 ones could make more advantageous choice by increasing the frequency of reward in advantage cards.
In conclusion, both standards and reversed tasks show children’s decision making deficits might be associated with sensitivity to frequency of punishment. However, this is not noticeable among younger aged group. The abilities of affective decision making be developed extremely fast between 3 and 4 years old.

Key words: affective decision making, gambling task, punishment, reward, frequency