The nature, sensitivity and functional significance of outcome-related ERP components (specifically relating to the loss/gain dimension) have not yet been unequivocally established, perhaps because of the following reasons: 1) there has been no study that has used a gambling task to measure the loss/gain dimension without the confound of the error/correct dimension, 2) the sample size in general has been very small in reported studies, and 3) the gender effect in evaluative processing has not been analyzed in detail, although gender has considerable influence on behavioral and electrophysiological variables; e.g., ORP has been found to be larger in females than in males [31]. The present study has taken all of these issues into consideration.
