Temporal Discounting

The goal of the present study was to examine the utility of a behavioral economic analysis to investigate the role of delay discounting in texting while driving. A sample of 147 college students completed a survey to assess how frequently they send and read text messages while driving. Based on this information, students were assigned to one of two groups: 19 students who frequently text while driving and 19 matched-control students who infrequently text while driving but were similar in gender, age, years of education, and years driving. The groups were compared on the extent to which they discounted, or devalued, delayed hypothetical monetary rewards using a delay-discounting task. In this task, students made repeated choices between $1000 available after a delay (ranging from 1 week to 10 years) and an equal or lesser amount of money available immediately. The results show that the students who frequently text while driving discounted delayed rewards at a greater rate than the matched control students. The study supports the conclusions that texting while driving is fundamentally an impulsive choice made by drivers, and that a behavioral economic approach may be a useful research tool for investigating the decisionmaking processes underlying risky behaviors.

In this paper three adaptive agent models incorporating triggered emotional responses are explored and evaluated on their rationality. One of the models is based on temporal discounting second on memory traces and the third one on hebbian learning with mutual inhibition. The models are assessed using a measure reflecting the environment's behaviour and expressing the extent of rationality. Simulation results and the extents of rationality of the different models over time are presented and analysed.

This paper introduces Mental Temporal Accounting-the behavioral economics application of mental accounting in the time domain. While most discounting studies are in the finance domain, social and environmental components have not gotten as much attention as appearing to require based on the novel perspectives this research grants. Theoretically we may also derive conclusions for contact theory and point at opening monetary gains focuses to social and environmental cues that may nudge people to perceive time differently and act on it accordingly. As mental accounting was successfully introduced to be extendable onto time, traditional mental accounting theory (Thaler 1999) should be revisted for attention to time discounting in the social and environmental spheres alongside the economic attention. Elucidating how contexts and experiencing critical life stages of parenthood influence temporal activity allocation choices promises to improve manifold decisions on education, health, asset management, career paths and common goods preservation throughout life for this generation and the following. KEYWORDS: discounting, economic time, environmental time, mental temporal discounting, social time, time Research Question The following empirical studies will test if the behavioral economics idea of mental accounting in the finance domain and hyperbolic discounting deviations from standard neoclassical discounting functions can be extended to realistically describe how individuals decide in regards to the scarce resource time, which is introduced as mental temporal discounting. Research question 1 will investigate the existence of certain mental temporal accounting categories, for instance such as economic, social and environmental time accounts. If so, research question 2 will capture a discounting variance based on economic, social and environmental contexts. Research question 3 will test whether there are age-dependent mental temporal accounts and if critical life events of parenthood changes time allocations as well as propose Hypothesis 1 that the elder one RAIS RESEARCH ASSOCIATION for INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

Economic inequality is associated with extreme rates of temporal discounting, which is a behavioral pattern where individuals choose smaller, immediate financial gains over larger, delayed gains. Such patterns may feed into rising global inequality, yet it is unclear if they are a function of choice preferences or norms, or rather absence of sufficient resources to meet immediate needs. It is also not clear if these reflect true differences in choice patterns between income groups. We test temporal discounting and five intertemporal choice anomalies using local currencies and value standards in 61 countries. Across a diverse sample of 13,629 participants, we found highly consistent rates of choice anomalies. Individuals with lower incomes were not significantly different, but economic inequality and broader financial circumstances impact population choice patterns.

This paper estimates time preference parameters using commonly-applied methodologies, with the aim of investigating the link between these measures and actual economic behaviour. An experiment was conducted in the city of Thies, in Senegal, using the unique reference numbers of banknotes as a means of determining an individual's willingness to save money. The findings of this experiment provide an innovative comparison between real choices, and choices made in the presence of hypothetical rewards. Our research indicates that individuals display a far greater degree of patience, when the possibility of genuine financial gain is made available to them. Our results show that hypothetical time preferences parameters are poor predictors of actual behaviour, prompting questions over the validity of commonly used measurements.

Temporal discounting (TD), the preference for earlier, smaller rewards over delayed, larger rewards, is a pervasive phenomenon that covaries with Big Five personality traits and Intelligence (IQ). This study provides novel insight by identifying correlates for IQ and Extraversion in the neural representation of TD preferences. An intertemporal choice task was employed, where offers were sequentially presented, distinguishing between one evaluation phase (first offer is presented) and one comparison phase (second offer is presented and values are compared). IQ correlated with responses of caudate nucleus to the subjective values of the offers, suggesting a role of cognitive abilities in modulating reward responses. Extraversion correlated with the strength of functional connectivity of a reward evaluation network centered on ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Participants (N = 17) chose between smaller, immediate and larger, delayed hypothetical money amounts in two laboratory sessions separated by 1 week. The choice procedure yielded equivalence points at which participants were indifferent between the smaller, immediate and the larger, delayed reward for eight different delays of the larger reward. These equivalence points then were used to estimate temporal discounting parameters according to three different discounting functions. A hyperbolic discounting function accounted for more of the variance than an exponential function, which replicated earlier research. Correlations across sessions showed that the discounting parameters were reliable, and that the equivalence points were reliable for delays greater than 1 month.

Acknowledgements My ideas, research and writing have been deeply influenced by other people around me. Therefore it is my greatest pleasure to offer my most heartfelt thanks to the following people. First of all I want to express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to my first thesis advisor Prof. Michela Schröder-Abé. She challenged me with insightful questions and gave me very helpful comments and research directions. Your attitude towards my research, enriched not only this thesis, but also my way of thinking. Thank you for making me feel welcomed, and for all the great and highly constructive comments you gave me on this thesis, but above all thank you for your support and company. It was a pleasure to walk this way with you! Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge with much appreciation my second advisor Prof. PaweB Ostaszewski. He continually and persuasively conveyed a spirit of curiosity and interest in regard to my research topic. During the dissertation process he had this great ability of accurately assessing my skills and knowledge and challenging me to seek higher personal achievements than I would do on my own. His advices, knowledge, and passion for science clearly shaped the arguments in this thesis and my attitude towards research. The most important thing for me personally was that as a mentor Prof. Ostaszewski provided me with invaluable directions and opportunities for growth, criticism, and support, just the right amount of pressure and independence, allowing me to chart my own path, but at the same time guiding me along the way. Thank you for your support, guidance, and your faith in me! Another friend I have to mention without whom I`ve couldn9t been able to complete this dissertation journey is Dr Magdalena C. Kaczmarek. She always found the right answers to all of my questions. It was her experience and support that prevented me from giving up in so many instances during the dissertation process. Thank you for sharing your experiences, time, and brilliant thoughts with me. Thank you for being such a great person and my friend! Additionally, the research reported in this thesis was financially supported by a scholarship provided by the National Science Center in Poland. Therefore, I would like to thank for their financial support which made this dissertation possible in the first place. Furthermore, I would like to thank the Max Planck Society and especially the International Max Planck Research School for hosting me as a visiting research fellow. An enormous thanks also goes to all my IMPRS colleagues. By opening the doors to your research lab and mind you not only influenced my research but also my way of thinking! Being part of the IMPRS was not only an honor but also an adventure I will never forget. Thank you for making me part of this great research community! For assistance in data collection I am deeply indebted to my students. Their commitment, passion and persistence in the lab was exceptional. It was my pleasure to teach you and to work with you! Most importantly, I am greatly indebted to my family and friends. I have the greatest Parents one can imagine. They gave me the right foundation and attitude towards life and work. Their support, encouragement, and love made this journey so much easier. I am also grateful for Robert who always found a way to keep me down to earth. You are a person who always found a way to lift me up after my failures and celebrated with me each of my successes. Last, but not least, a special thanks also to all my friends outside of academia, Gosia, Ewelina, Kasia and Kamil, who more or less patiently tolerated my vast absence in their lives. You have been so understanding and supportive all the time.

When asked to choose between immediate versus future gains, individuals tend to fast-track benefits and, congruently, they tend to delay costs. But, despite the ever-increasing importance of the topic, few studies have investigated this behavior among senior citizens. The handful of studies that have been conducted have led to conflicting results and focused on gains as opposed to losses. These conflicting results may in part be due to demographic confounds and the inherent variability that comes with aging. Here, demographic confounds and variability due to aging were minimized by studying three groups: middle-aged, unimpaired-older, and impaired-older adults. Participants were asked to choose between sooner-smaller and later-larger monetary rewards and losses. Results indicated that impaired-older adults discounted the future more than unimpairedolder adults. Interestingly, middle-aged adults discounted future gains at a similar rate to impairedolder adults, but discounted future losses less than impaired-older adults (and similarly to unimpaired-older adults). This may suggest that unimpaired-older adults have developed a compensatory mechanism that leads to more cautious, patient choices. We discuss these results in the context of the neurobiology and neuropsychology of aging and decision making.

In this paper, we argue that time-inconsistent preferences in financial decision-making are sensitive to the kind of prospection involved. Given that episodic prospection increases the subjective importance of a future reward (Benoit, Gilbert and Burgess, 2011), we expect that this human faculty is able to reduce hyperbolic discounting biases. Furthermore, we suppose that the role of episodic prospection in reducing hyperbolic discounting may vary depending on the typology of solicited scenarios, environmental conditions and an individual's personality traits. An experimental task was submitted to a sample of young individuals (N=77; 40 Germans and 33 Italians; average age 22 years, range 18-30), who were asked to make farsighted decisions and engage their episodic prospection. Our experimental results provide evidence of the influence of episodic prospection in human decision-making; we show that episodic prospection generates a more rational attitude in relation to decisions about the future. This was found to be particularly true if the solicited scenario referred to a primary need (a first priority). These findings suggest that the vivid representation of future events can be used to 'nudge', i.e. stimulate, sound long-range decision-making, with clear implications for both policy makers and the financial industry. Nevertheless, cautiousness is necessary, because we also provide evidence that personal and environmental conditions, as well as the type of domain (e.g. first priority, second priority or entertainment) being projected into the future may reduce the effect of this 'nudge'. We also found that an extremely vivid self-projection into real-life situations can lead some people to refuse to project themselves in the 'distant future', thus reverting the role of episodic prospection, from a nudge into a brake on long-range decisionmaking.

Choice impulsivity is characterized by the choice of immediate, smaller reward options over future, larger reward options, and is often thought to be associated with negative life outcomes. However, some environments make future rewards more uncertain, and in these environments impulsive choices can be beneficial. Here we examined the conditions under which impulsive vs. non-impulsive decision strategies would be advantageous. We used Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to model three common decision-making tasks: Temporal Discounting, Information Sampling, and an Explore-Exploit task. We manipulated environmental variables to create circumstances where future outcomes were relatively uncertain. We then manipulated the discount factor of an MDP agent, which affects the value of immediate versus future rewards, to model impulsive and non-impulsive behavior. This allowed us to examine the performance of impulsive and non-impulsive agents in more or less predictable environments. In Temporal Discounting, we manipulated the transition probability to delayed rewards and found that the agent with the lower discount factor (i.e. the impulsive agent) collected more average reward than the agent with a higher discount factor (the non-impulsive agent) by selecting immediate reward options when the probability of receiving the future reward was low. In the Information Sampling task, we manipulated the amount of information obtained with each sample. When sampling led to small information gains, the impulsive MDP agent collected more average reward than the non-impulsive agent. Third, in the Explore-Exploit task, we manipulated the substitution rate for novel options. When the substitution rate was high, the impulsive agent again performed better than the non-impulsive agent, as it explored the novel options less and instead exploited options with known reward values. The results of these analyses show that impulsivity can be advantageous in environments that are unexpectedly uncertain.

Decisions maximizing benefits involve a tradeoff between the quantity of a reward and the cost of elapsed time until an animal receives it. The estimation of long-term reward values is critical to attain the most desirable outcomes over a certain period of time. Reinforcement learning theories have established algorithms to estimate the long-term reward values of multiple future rewards in which the values of future rewards are discounted as a function of how many steps of choices are necessary to achieve them. Here, we report that presumed striatal projection neurons represent the long-term values of multiple future rewards estimated by a standard reinforcement learning model while monkeys are engaged in a series of trial-and-error choices and adaptive decisions for multiple rewards. We found that the magnitude of activity of a subset of neurons was positively correlated with the long-term reward values, and that of another subset of neurons was negatively correlated throughout the...

Steep delay discounting is associated with problems such as addiction, obesity, and risky sexual behavior that are frequently described as reflecting impulsiveness and lack of self-control, but it may simply indicate poor cognitive functioning. The present investigation took advantage of the unique opportunity provided by the Human Connectome Project (N=1,206) to examine the relation between delay discounting and 11 cognitive tasks as well as the Big Five fundamental personality traits. With income level and education statistically controlled, discounting was correlated with only four of the 11 cognitive abilities evaluated, although the rs were all small (<.20). Importantly, the two discounting measures loaded on their own factor. Discounting was not correlated with Neuroticism or Conscientiousness, traits related to psychometric impulsiveness and self-control. These findings suggest that steep delay discounting is not simply an indicator of poor cognitive functioning or psychometric impulsiveness but an important individual difference characteristic in its own right.

In this paper three adaptive agent models incorporating triggered emotional responses are explored and evaluated on their rationality. One of the models is based on temporal discounting second on memory traces and the third one on hebbian learning with mutual inhibition. The models are assessed using a measure reflecting the environment's behaviour and expressing the extent of rationality. Simulation results and the extents of rationality of the different models over time are presented and analysed.

Humans are particularly adept at modifying their behavior in accordance with changing environmental demands. Through various mechanisms of cognitive control, individuals are able to tailor actions to fit complex short- and long-term goals. The research described in this thesis uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to characterize the neural correlates of cognitive control at two levels of complexity: response inhibition and self-control in intertemporal choice. First, we examined changes in neural response associated with increased experience and skill in response inhibition; successful response inhibition was associated with decreased neural response over time in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region widely implicated in cognitive control, providing evidence for increased neural efficiency with learned automaticity. We also examined a more abstract form of cognitive control using intertemporal choice. In two experiments, we identified putative neural substrates f...

There is widespread interest in identifying computational and neurobiological mechanisms that influence the ability to choose long-term benefits over more proximal and readily available rewards in domains such as dietary and economic choice. We present the results of a human fMRI study that examines how neural activity relates to observed individual differences in the discounting of future rewards during an intertemporal monetary choice task. We found that a region of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) BA-46 was more active in trials where subjects chose delayed rewards, after controlling for the subjective value of those rewards. We also found that the connectivity from dlPFC BA-46 to a region of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) widely associated with the computation of stimulus values, increased at the time of choice, and especially during trials in which subjects chose delayed rewards. Finally, we found that estimates of effective connectivity between these two regions played a critical role in predicting out-of-sample, between-subject differences in discount rates. Together with previous findings in dietary choice, these results suggest that a common set of computational and neurobiological mechanisms facilitate choices in favor of long-term reward in both settings.

Stimuli and activations of mental states usually induce emotional responses that are experienced by their associated feelings. On the one hand the experienced emotions often have their effect in turn on activations of other mental states and on behaviour, and on the other hand these experiences have an adaptive effect on the strength of such emotional responses in the future. This paper concentrates on the latter type of dependency: the strength by which emotional responses are induced depends on previous experiences to which adaptation has taken place. The paper presents a comparative analysis of three adaptive dynamic modelling approaches addressing how these induction strengths are adapted over time. As a basis a dynamical model for emotional responses and associated feelings is taken, based on a recursive as-if body loop. Next three dynamical models are presented for adaptation of the strength of the emotional response based on experiences. Example simulation results are shown and commonalities and differences between the models are discussed.

This paper presents a theory of how how people prioritize their time when pursuing goals with different deadlines. Although progress has been made in understanding the dynamics of multiple-goal pursuit, theory in this area only addresses cases where the goals have the same deadline. We rectify this issue by integrating the multiple-goal pursuit model-a formal theory of multiple goal pursuit-with theories of intertemporal motivation and choice. We examine the ability of four computational models derived from this general theory to account for participants' choices across four experiments. The models make different assumptions about how people determine the valence of prioritizing a goal (i.e., by monitoring distance to goal or time pressure), and whether the goal is subject to temporal discounting. In each experiment, participants performed a task requiring them to pursue two goals. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated deadline and distance; Experiment 3 manipulated deadline and time pressure; Experiment 4 manipulated all three factors. Counter to the predictions of existing theory, participants generally prioritized the goal with the shorter deadline. We also observed weak, but positive effects of distance on prioritization (Experiment 2) and non-linear effects of time pressure (Experiment 3). The model that best explained participants' decisions assumed that valence is determined by time pressure and the expected utility of a goal is subject to temporal discounting. This new model broadens the range of phenomena that can be accounted for within a single theory of multiple-goal pursuit, and improves our understanding of the interface between motivation and decision making.

Existing behavioral studies of intertemporal choice suggest that both human and animal choosers are impulsive. One possible explanation for this is that they discount future gains in a hyperbolic or quasi-hyperbolic fashion (David I. Laibson 1997; Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue 2002). This observation stands in contrast to standard normative theory, which predicts exponential discounting for any single maximizing agent (Robert H. Strotz 1956). This disparity between empirical and normative approaches is typically explained by proposing that human choosers suffer from inner conflict, balancing an impulse for an immediate gratification against other forces calling for delayed gratification (Richard H. Thaler and H.

Background: The Mediterranean Diet (hereinafter MD) is considered a healthy dietary pattern. Adherence to this pattern can be assessed by means of the KIDMED test by which individuals are assigned an index and classified into three groups of adherence to MD: high, medium, and low. In addition, impulsivity or impatience in intertemporal choice has been defined as a strong preference for small immediate rewards over large delayed ones. Objective: This study examines the relationship between dietary habits, specifically Mediterranean dietary pattern, measured by the KIDMED index, and the exhibited impatience in intertemporal choices, by means of the parameter k (discount rate of the hyperbolic discount function). Methods: A sample of 207 university students answered a questionnaire based on two tests: the KIDMED test, to assess the degree of adherence to MD, and an intertemporal choice questionnaire, to assess impatience or impulsivity. Individuals were grouped depending on their KIDMED score and then the discount rate or impulsivity parameter was calculated for each group. Results: Discount rates were inversely related to the degree of adherence to MD. The values of overall k were 1.53, 1.91, and 3.71% for the groups exhibiting high, medium and low adherence to MD, respectively. We also found higher k-values for larger rewards (magnitude effect) in the three groups. Conclusion: High adherence to MD is related to less steep time discounting, which implies less impulsivity (more self-control) or lower discount rates. Conversely, low adherence to MD is related to steeper time discounting, which implies impulsivity or higher discount rates. These findings could be used to identify the target population where policy interventions are needed in order to promote healthier diet habits.

Previous studies have shown that domestic chicks, Gallus gallus domesticus, trained in a competitive foraging condition would subsequently develop a high degree of impulsiveness in an intertemporal choice paradigm. Competition inevitably causes variance in the amount of food that the foragers gain. However, it is not known whether the food variance is causally linked with the impulsiveness. In experiment 1, we compared four groups of chicks trained in combinations of two social conditions (pseudocompetition or isolated) and two food conditions (variable or constant food). The food variance was introduced by varying the number of grains in each trial according to a binomial distribution. The subject chick was separated from the コメント [AT1]: Author: 'variant' means 'different'. I think you mean 'variable'. 2 competitors by a transparent wall, and no actual interference occurred. Chicks were subsequently tested in binary choices between a small reward after a short delay (SS) and a large reward after a long delay (LL) in an isolated and constant food condition. If chicks had been trained under the pseudocompetition and variable food, they chose LL significantly less frequently than the other three groups. The effect disappeared when the LL delay was omitted, suggesting that chicks accurately memorized the food amount. The food variance is thus a necessary condition for the stronger temporal discounting. Otherwise, the observed effect could be ascribed to a paradoxical risk proneness associated with the variable option. In experiment 2, we compared four groups of chicks in which food amount varied either in SS or LL, or both. The subsequent binary choice tests revealed that the chicks chose SS irrespective of whether SS or LL had varied. These results cannot be explained in terms of a greater risk-prone choice of the variable option. Coincidence of perceived competition and food variance, at least in one option, is sufficient for chicks to develop choice impulsiveness.

In this paper three adaptive agent models incorporating triggered emotional responses are explored and evaluated on their rationality. One of the models is based on temporal discounting second on memory traces and the third one on hebbian learning with mutual inhibition. The models are assessed using a measure reflecting the environment's behaviour and expressing the extent of rationality. Simulation results and the extents of rationality of the different models over time are presented and analysed.

Understanding the neural basis of consciousness is a fundamental goal of neuroscience. Many of the studies tackling this question have focused on conscious perception, but these studies have been largely vision-centric, with very few involving tactile perception. Therefore, we developed a novel tactile threshold perception task, which we used in conjunction with high-density scalp electroencephalography and eye-metric recordings. Participants were delivered threshold-level vibrations to one of the four non-thumb fingers, and were asked to report their perception using a response box. With false discovery rate (FDR) mass univariate analysis procedures, we found significant event-related potentials (ERP) including bilateral N140 and P300 for perceived vibrations; significant bilateral P100 and P300 were found following vibrations that were not perceived. Significant differences between perceived and not perceived trials were found bilaterally in the N140 and P300. Additionally, we found that pupil diameter and blink rate increased and that microsaccade rate decreased following vibrations that were perceived relative to those that were not perceived. While many of the signals are consistent with similar ERPfindings across sensory modalities, our results indicating a significant P300 in not perceived trials raise more questions regarding P300's perceptual meaning. Additionally, our findings support the use of eye metrics as a measure of physiological arousal as pertains to conscious .

This study investigated the relationship between interval timing and impulsivity in intertemporal choice in a healthy population. A duration production task was used to assess interval timing. Choice impulsivity was assessed using a hypothetical money choice task. Results from 134 participants indicated that faster internal clock significantly predicted lower choice impulsivity. A subsequent drift-diffusion model analysis of the behavioural data revealed that in the subgroup of relatively farsighted participants, faster internal clock predicted consideration of more information before making a choice, which in turn was associated with lower choice impulsivity. In the subgroup of relatively impatient participants too, faster internal clock predicted consideration of more information, but which in turn was associated with higher choice impulsivity. It is concluded that among relatively farsighted individuals in a normal population, faster internal clock favours a more deliberate processing of the options at hand, thus eliciting less impulsive choices.

Background: Many decisions made in Software Engineering practices are intertemporal choices: trade-offs in time between closer options with potential short-term benefit and future options with potential long-term benefit. However, how software professionals make intertemporal decisions is not well understood. Aim: This paper investigates how shifting time frames influence preferences in software projects in relation to purposefully selected background factors. Method: We investigate temporal discounting by replicating a questionnaire-based observational study. The replication uses a changed-population and-experimenter design to increase the internal and external validity of the original results. Results: The results of this study confirm the occurrence of temporal discounting in samples of both professional and student participants from different countries and demonstrate strong variance in discounting between study participants. We found that professional experience influenced discounting. Participants with broader professional experience exhibited less discounting than those with narrower experience. Conclusions: The results provide strong empirical support for the relevance and importance of temporal discounting in SE and the urgency of targeted interdisciplinary research to explore the underlying mechanisms and their theoretical and practical implications. The results suggest that technical debt management could be improved by increasing the breadth of experience available for critical decisions with long-term impact. In addition, the present study provides a methodological basis for replicating temporal discounting studies in software engineering.

Across five studies using samples from both Japan and United States (N = 2345), we take a multi-method approach to test the prediction from life history theory that a slow, compared to fast, life history strategy promotes investment in cooperative relationships. Studies 1 and 2 examined how different measures as proxies for life history strategy (i.e., Mini-K and High-K Strategy Scale) relate to cooperation in various economic games. Studies 3 to 5 measured early childhood environments (i.e., childhood harshness and unpredictability), manipulated resource scarcity using previously validated methods, and then measured cooperation. Across our studies, we also examined four hypothesized psychological mechanisms that could explain the relation between life history strategy and cooperation: temporal discounting, concern for reputation, social value orientation, and trust in others. Overall, we found no support for the hypothesis that life history strategy predicts cooperation or that early childhood environments interact with current resource scarcity to predict cooperation. Thus, our initial findings imply that life history theory may not account for individual variation in cooperation with unknown others.

Discounting the value of delayed rewards has primarily been measured in children with the delay of gratification task and in adolescents and adults with the delay discounting task. In the present study, we assessed the suitability of the delay discounting task as a measure of temporal discounting in children. A sample of 7‐ to 9‐year‐olds (N = 98) completed a delay discounting task, a delay of gratification task, a sensation seeking measure, and IQ measures. In addition, teacher‐based assessments of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder traits were measured. The results indicated that the majority of children produced meaningful data on the discounting task and discounted rewards hyperbolically. Children with an elevated risk of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder showed a trend towards discounting future rewards on the delay discounting task more steeply than did those at low risk. However, delay discounting was unrelated to either delay of gratification or sensation seekin...

Consumers often face choices involving intertemporal tradeoffs. Existing research suggests that, in general, decision makers do not obey discounted utility theory because their discount rates are context dependent. Recent literature incorporates decision makers' subjective perception of time into the classic discounted utility model and finds relatively constant discount rates over subjective time. In the current study, we investigated the magnitude effect with subjective time, provided a holistic view via a more comprehensive experiment including multiple anomalies, and found that subjective time perception was able to explain most of the anomalies simultaneously in a single scenario.

Choice behavior requires animals to evaluate both short- and long-term advantages and disadvantages of all potential alternatives. Impulsive choice is traditionally measured in laboratory tasks by utilizing delay discounting (DD), a paradigm that offers a choice between a smaller immediate reward, or a larger more delayed reward. This study tested a large sample of Heterogeneous Stock (HS) male (n = 896) and female (n = 898) rats, part of a larger genetic study, to investigate whether measures of reward maximization overlapped with traditional models of delay discounting via the patch depletion model using a Sequential Patch Depletion procedure. In this task, rats were offered a concurrent choice between two water “patches” and could elect to “stay” in the current patch or “leave” for an alternative patch. Staying in the current patch resulted in decreasing subsequent reward magnitudes, whereas the choice to leave a patch was followed by a delay and a resetting to the maximum reward...

Purpose Researchers have studied intrasexual competition by priming the competition using a variety of techniques, including manipulated sex ratios and vignettes implying a competition either for resources critical for obtaining mates or directly for mates. When priming intrasexual competition, changes in the dependent variable of interest are generally taken as prima facie evidence of intrasexual competition; few researchers have tried to independently assess intrasexual competition. Methods The studies presented here replicate and extend one such state measure of intrasexual competition using words taken from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) with additional competition words (PANAS-Short Form with an added competitive subscale). The first study used a vignette manipulation and the second used a sex ratio manipulation. Participants then responded to the modified PANAS, the Intrasexual Competition Scale (ICS) and the Intrasexual Rivalry Scale (IRS). Results Results ...

Reciprocal altruism, the most probable mechanism for cooperation among unrelated individuals, can be modelled as a Prisoner’s Dilemma. This game predicts that cooperation should evolve whenever the players, who expect to interact repeatedly, make choices contingent to their partner’s behaviour. Experimental evidence, however, indicates that reciprocity is rare among animals. One reason for this would be that animals are very impulsive compared to humans. Several studies have reported that temporal discounting (that is, strong preferences for immediate benefits) has indeed a negative impact on the occurrence of cooperation. Yet, the role of impulsive action, another facet of impulsiveness, remains unexplored. Here, we conducted a laboratory experiment in which male and female zebra finches (Taenyopigia guttata) were paired assortatively with respect to their level of impulsive action and then played an alternating Prisoner’s Dilemma. As anticipated, we found that self-controlled pair...

Neurocognitive tasks are frequently used to assess disordered decision making, and cognitive models of these tasks can quantify performance in terms related to decision makers&#39; underlying cognitive processes. In many cases, multiple cognitive models purport to describe similar processes, but it is difficult to evaluate whether they measure the same latent traits or processes. In this paper, we develop methods for modeling behavior across multiple tasks by connecting cognitive model parameters to common latent constructs. This approach can be used to assess whether two tasks measure the same dimensions of cognition, or actually improve the estimates of cognitive models when there are overlapping cognitive processes between two related tasks. The approach is then applied to connecting decision data on two behavioral tasks that evaluate clinically-relevant deficits, the delay discounting task and Cambridge gambling task, to determine whether they both measure the same dimension of ...

Previous literature suggested that individuals increase temporal and risk discounting at the presence of a proposer whose face is perceived as untrustworthy, suggesting the activation of protective choice patterns. By the way, the COVID-19 pandemic has substantially transformed the way we interact with other people, even bringing us into situations where the face of the person making a proposal is not fully visible, because of the mask. With the current study, we aimed at verifying if the effect of proposer’s facial (un)trustworthiness on discounting behavior is modulated by mask wearing. In two different experiments, participants performed traditional delay and probability discounting tasks with masked proposers manipulated across trustworthiness levels. Results highlighted that, even after checking for subject-specific emotion recognition ability with masked faces, the presence of a masked untrustworthy proposer increases both delay and probability discounting parameters, although...

Beyond cognitive ability and family background, are there other significant determinants of educational attainment? From research in psychology, economics, education and criminology, one powerful influence is the ability to delay gratification, operationalised in this paper as 'delay-discounting'. It is intuitively plausible that the ability to subordinate short-term appetites in order to obtain long-term goals could have positive consequences for academic achievement. A representative sample of 1131 students preparing for a state examination were offered a series of hypothetical options in which prize winnings, and the interval before the winnings could be collected, were varied. Greater willingness to wait was rewarded with increments in winnings. Participants were also given a short test of cognitive ability, asked about their academic achievement, and family and community status. A multivariate analysis indicated that, while controlling for cognitive ability and economic deprivation, delay-discounting made a significant prediction of attainment. Policy implications for children's learning are discussed.

When comparing themselves with others, people often perceive their own actions and behaviour favourably. This phenomenon is often categorised as a bias of attribution, with favourable self-evaluation resulting from differing explanations of one’s own behaviour and that of others. However, studies on availability biases offer an alternative explanation, ascribing egocentric biases to the inherent sensory asymmetries between performing an action and merely observing it. In this study, we used a paradigm that allowed us to directly compare these two distinct sources of bias. Participants perceived the tasks they performed to be harder than the tasks they observed, but demonstrated no bias driven by favourable self-evaluation. Furthermore, the degree of overestimation of the difficulty of performed tasks was magnified as overall task difficulty increased. These findings suggest that egocentric biases are in part derived from sensory asymmetries inherent to the first-person perspective.

The present paper describes two studies in which participants with and without acquired brain injuries were compared on a temporal discounting task involving various hypothetical amounts of money available at varying delay values. During Experiment 1, both groups of participants were presented with choices between amounts of money ranging from 1 to 1000 US dollars at delays from 1 week to 10 years. The results obtained from this procedure were consistent with previous models of temporal delay discounting for control group participants, yet not for the majority of the participants with acquired brain injuries. During Experiment 2, adjustments in hypothetical amounts and delays were made whereby the amounts of money ranged from 1 to 20 US dollars at delays from 1 day to 1 year. These manipulations yielded data generally consistent with temporal delay discounting models previously reported in the published literature. The utility of using delay discounting procedures as a means of assessing impulsivity in persons with acquired brain injuries is presented.

Two groups of rats were tested for self-control. In Exp. 1 all rats were impulsive. In Exp. 2, when subjects entered one goal box, the rats would receive 3 pellets immediately, the impulsive choice. When Standard Group rats entered the other goal box, they received 7 pellets after a delay of 10 sec., the self-control choice. When Distributed Group rats made a selF-control choice in Phase 1 they received 1 pellet immediately, 3 after 3 sec., and 3 pellets 7 sec. later (10 sec. total); in Phase 2 they received 1 pellet immediately and 6 after 10 sec.; and in Phase 3 they received 7 p d e t s after a delay of 10 sec. Rats in the Distributed Group, but not rats in the Standard Group, tended to be self-controlled throughout the experiment.

The paper deals with the issue of intertemporal discounting from the perspective of income groups, savings, financial reserves, and loans. The study included a total of 599 individuals with an average age of 38.3 years (min. 16 and max. 82 years) who answered classical questions focused on time discounting and impulsive behaviour. In total, four possible scenarios were analysed: a small reward (CZK 100) with a delay of 1 day, a small reward with a delay of 1 month, a large reward (CZK 100,000) with a delay of 1 day and a large reward with a delay of 1 month. The delayed reward was always increased by 10% (i.e., CZK 110 or CZK 110,000). Using the three hypotheses, the analyses confirm that individuals with extremely low incomes have savings only in 26.4% of the cases, while individuals with the highest incomes have savings in 92.2% of the cases (p=0.0000). Furthermore, it was revealed that individuals with savings are approximately 1.7 times more likely to have higher patience than i...

Introduction: Temporal discounting (TD) describes how a certain reward is seen as less valuable the more its delivery is postponed. There are two main types of TD tasks, hypothetical and real, both of which use monetary rewards. Over the last few years, however, variants of these tasks have been adjusted to assess clinical groups of children showing impulsivity as found in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Objective: To review and discuss studies conducted over the last 10 years on the use of TD tasks in the assessment of pediatric patients with ADHD. Method: For this literature review, articles were non-systematically selected from PubMed, MEDLINE and SciELO databases to include experimental studies on the use of at least one TD paradigm to assess and distinguish ADHD and non-ADHD groups. Results: Of the studies assessed, 76.19% used hypothetical tasks, followed by real tasks (28.57%), and, finally, tasks using different types of reward, such as toys or rewarding act...

The ability to process environmental cues and make advantageous choices has been fundamental during human evolution. Discounting future rewards is a capacity of our evolved mind and could be useful for understanding career decisions. This paper investigated the relationship between real-life plans, career choices, and income indicators based on an evolutionary approach of future discounting. Study 1 analyzed the plans of 200 senior high school students, and Study 2 analyzed a database of 46,649 applicants to a Brazilian public university. The results demonstrated that lower income subjects made career decisions with quicker returns and smaller investments. They included a job in immediate plans more frequently than higher income students who planned to go to a university. Analyzing the applicants' choices, higher income subjects sought courses with greater entrance difficulty. We suggest that individuals adjust career plans and choices according to their socioeconomic conditions and assume different discounting rates by considering risks of failure and future gains.

In this paper, focusing on a problem involved in extensive structures, a two-step generalization of extensive structures is discussed. Extensive structures can be useful in measuring attributes possessing an invariant unit, whereas they will not be adequate for measuring attributes in the case of a unit varying according to time, as inferred from the observation that the value of money (a unit) changes with the passage of time. To solve this problem, extensive structures are generalized such that the concatenation operation can be non-associative and noncommutative. This generalization yields a weighted additive function that enables us to explain preferences among temporal sequences as long as the degree of consumers' impatience is constant regardless of the receipt period of each component (outcome). However, it is well known that the state of constant impatience is often violated in intertemporal choice. This problem can be solved by expressing the advanced (resp. postponed) receipt of outcomes by right multiplication (resp. right division) by "subjective" durations. The subjective duration is assessed for each period in such a way that the duration becomes longer when a person feels impatient during a particular period. By the introduction of right multiplication (right division), the weighted additive function is a generalized form of the weight being a function of durations, and hence we can evaluate intertemporal choice problems accompanied by non-constant impatience.

Significance More than 1.5 billion people worldwide live in poverty. Even in the United States, 14% live below the poverty line. Despite many policies and programs, poverty remains a domestic and global challenge; the number of US households earning less than $2/d nearly doubled in the last 15 y. One reason why the poor remain poor is their tendency to make myopic decisions. With reduced temporal discounting, low-income individuals could invest more in forward-looking educational, financial, and social activities that could alleviate their impoverished situation. We show that increased community trust can decrease temporal discounting in low-income populations and test this mechanism in a 2-y field intervention in rural Bangladesh through a low-cost and scalable method that builds community trust.