The present study examined individual characteristics potentially associated with changes in mitigation behaviors (social distancing and hygiene) recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and ...Prevention. Analysis of online survey responses from 361 adults, ages 20-78, with US IP addresses, identified significant correlates of adaptive behavioral changes, with implications for preventive strategies and mental health needs. The extent to which individuals changed their mitigation behaviors was unrelated to self-rated health or concern regarding the personal effects of COVID-19 but was related to concern regarding the effects of the pandemic on others. Thus, mitigation behaviors do not appear to be primarily motivated by self-protection. Importantly, adaptive changes in mitigation behaviors increased with age. However, these changes, particularly those related to the frequency of close proximity encounters, appear to be due to age-related decreases in anxiety and depression. Taken together, the present results argue against over-reliance on 'fear appeals' in public health messages as they may increase anxiety and depression. Instead, the present findings argue for more appeals to people's concern for others to motivate mitigation as well as indicating an immediate need to address individual mental health concerns for the sake of society as a whole.
We compared temporal and probability discounting of a nonconsumable reward (money) and three directly consumable rewards (candy, soda, and beer). When rewards were delayed, monetary rewards were ...discounted less steeply than directly consumable rewards, all three of which were discounted at equivalent rates. When rewards were probabilistic, however, there was no difference between the discounting of monetary and directly consumable rewards. It has been reported that substance abusers discount delayed drug rewards more steeply than delayed money, but this difference may reflect special characteristics of drugs or drug abusers, or it may reflect a general property of consumable rewards. The present findings suggest that abused substances (like beer) share the properties of other directly consumable rewards, whereas delayed monetary rewards are special because they are fungible, generalized (conditioned) reinforcers.
The Monetary Choice Questionnaire (MCQ) is a widely used behavioral task that measures the rate of delay discounting (i.e., k), the degree to which a delayed reward loses its present value as a ...function of the time to its receipt. Both 21- and 27-item MCQs have been extensively validated and proven valuable in research. Different methods have been developed to streamline MCQ scoring. However, existing scoring methods have yet to tackle the issue of missing responses or provide clear guidance on imputing such data. Due to this lack of knowledge, the present study developed and compared three imputation approaches that leverage the MCQ's structure and prioritize ease of implementation. Additionally, their performance was compared with mode imputation. A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to evaluate the performance of these approaches in handling various missing responses in each observation across two datasets from prior studies that employed the 21- and 27-item MCQs. One of the three approaches consistently outperformed mode imputation across all performance measures. This approach involves imputing missing values using congruent non-missing responses to the items corresponding to the same k value or introducing random responses when congruent answers are unavailable. This investigation unveils a straightforward method for imputing missing data in the MCQ while ensuring unbiased estimates. Along with the investigation, an R tool was developed for researchers to implement this strategy while streamlining the MCQ scoring process.
CDC-recommended mitigation behaviors and vaccination status were assessed in an online sample (
N
= 810; ages 18–80). Results were consistent with a differential distress hypothesis positing that ...whereas psychological distress, which is induced in part by social deprivation, interferes with mitigation behaviors involving social distancing, it motivates vaccination, in part because it, in turn, can increase social interaction. Age modulated these effects. Despite the greater risk of severe consequences, older adults not only showed less distress, but compared to younger participants with equivalent levels of distress, the older adults showed less effect of distress on both social distancing and vaccination status. Together these findings highlight a conundrum faced in public health messaging. Traditional “fear messages” may be less effective for older adults, who are most in danger, whereas in younger adults, the distress induced by fear messages may motivate vaccination but diminish mitigation behaviors needed to prevent subsequent “breakthrough” infections.
Intertemporal choices require trade-offs between short-term and long-term outcomes. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) damage causes steep discounting of future rewards (delay discounting DD) and ...impoverished episodic future thinking (EFT). The role of vmPFC in reward valuation, EFT, and their interaction during intertemporal choice is still unclear. Here, 12 patients with lesions to vmPFC and 41 healthy controls chose between smaller-immediate and larger-delayed hypothetical monetary rewards while we manipulated reward magnitude and the availability of EFT cues. In the EFT condition, participants imagined personal events to occur at the delays associated with the larger-delayed rewards. We found that DD was steeper in vmPFC patients compared to controls, and not modulated by reward magnitude. However, EFT cues downregulated DD in vmPFC patients as well as controls. These findings indicate that vmPFC integrity is critical for the valuation of (future) rewards, but not to instill EFT in intertemporal choice.
Abstract
Widespread vaccination is necessary to minimize or halt the effects of many infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Stagnating vaccine uptake can prolong pandemics, raising the question of ...how we might predict, prevent, and correct vaccine hesitancy and unwillingness. In a multinational sample (N = 4,452) recruited from 13 countries that varied in pandemic severity and vaccine uptake (July 2021), we examined whether short-sighted decision-making as exemplified by steep delay discounting—choosing smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards—predicts COVID-19 vaccination status. Delay discounting was steeper in unvaccinated individuals and predicted vaccination status over and above demographics or mental health. The results suggest that delay discounting, a personal characteristic known to be modifiable through cognitive interventions, is a contributing cause of differences in vaccine compliance.
In four experiments, we compared the effects of delay, probability, and monetary amount on the subjective value of gains and losses. For delayed gains, smaller amounts were discounted more steeply ...than larger amounts, whereas the opposite pattern was observed with probabilistic gains. For both delayed and probabilistic losses, however, amount had much smaller and less reliable effects on discounting. Taken together, the pattern of differential magnitude effects leads to delayed gains' being discounted significantly more steeply than delayed losses, but only at smaller amounts, whereas probabilistic gains are discounted significantly more steeply than probabilistic losses, but only at larger amounts. Even though the same hyperbola-like function described both individual and group discounting of delayed and probabilistic gains and losses, the present findings suggest that different processes are involved in discounting positive and negative outcomes. Raw data may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.
AREA UNDER THE CURVE AS A MEASURE OF DISCOUNTING Myerson, Joel; Green, Leonard; Warusawitharana, Missaka
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior,
September 2001, Letnik:
76, Številka:
2
Journal Article
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Odprti dostop
We describe a novel approach to the measurement of discounting based on calculating the area under the empirical discounting function. This approach avoids some of the problems associated with ...measures based on estimates of the parameters of theoretical discounting functions. The area measure may be easily calculated for both individual and group data collected using any of a variety of current delay and probability discounting procedures. The present approach is not intended as a substitute for theoretical discounting models. It is useful, however, to have a simple, univariate measure of discounting that is not tied to any specific theoretical framework.
The present study examined delay discounting of hypothetical monetary rewards over a wide range of amounts (from $20 to $10 million) in order to determine how reward amount affects the parameters of ...the hyperboloid discounting function and to compare fits of the hyperboloid model with fits of two discounting models used in neuroeconomics: the quasi‐hyperbolic and the double‐exponential. Of the three models assessed, the hyperboloid provided the best fit to the delay discounting data. The present delay discounting results may be compared to those of a previous study on probability discounting (Myerson, Green, & Morris, 2011) that used the same extended range of amounts. The hyperboloid function accurately described both types of discounting, but reward amount had opposite effects on the degree of discounting. Importantly, the amount of delayed reward affected the rate parameter of the hyperboloid discounting function but not its exponent, whereas the opposite was true for the amount of probabilistic reward. The finding that the exponent of the hyperboloid discounting function remains relatively constant across a wide range of delayed amounts provides strong support for a psychophysical scaling interpretation, and stands in stark contrast to the finding that the exponent of the hyperboloid function increases with the amount of probabilistic reward. Taken together, these findings argue that delay and probability discounting involve fundamentally different decision‐making mechanisms.
The present study addresses three questions regarding age differences in working memory: (1) whether performance on complex span tasks decreases as a function of age at a faster rate than performance ...on simple span tasks; (2) whether spatial working memory decreases at a faster rate than verbal working memory; and (3) whether the structure of working memory abilities is different for different age groups. Adults, ages 20-89 (n = 388), performed three simple and three complex verbal span tasks and three simple and three complex spatial memory tasks. Performance on the spatial tasks decreased at faster rates as a function of age than performance on the verbal tasks, but within each domain, performance on complex and simple span tasks decreased at the same rates. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that domain-differentiated models yielded better fits than models involving domain-general constructs, providing further evidence of the need to distinguish verbal and spatial working memory abilities. Regardless of which domain-differentiated model was examined, and despite the faster rates of decrease in the spatial domain, age group comparisons revealed that the factor structure of working memory abilities was highly similar in younger and older adults and showed no evidence of age-related dedifferentiation.
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