Association for Behavior Analysis International

Delay discounting describes how the value of an outcome is affected by how quickly it is delivered. How rapidly reinforcers are discounted differs across species as well as individuals, and this phenomenon has been widely studied over the past 30 years using a variety of procedural assays. Despite methodological differences, many methods of assessing discounting have impressive internal reliability and external validity. The current study assesses the validity of several abbreviated measures to examine how quickly discounting rates can be determined. In a counterbalanced order, rats experienced several discounting procedures. These included an adjusting delay procedure, in which amounts to a larger reward were manipulated across conditions, and several increasing delay procedures, in which the delay to the larger reward was manipulated either across days or within trial blocks in a session. Post-hoc analyses examined validity across measures and also whether reliable results could be attained in time spans as short as one week. Ideally, such results can lend confidence in using abbreviated discounting assays when examining potential correlates with other time-sensitive variables in behavioral, pharmacological, or aging research.

It is often a good strategy to "stand in the other person's shoes" to see a situation from a different perspective. People frequently attempt to infer what someone else would recommend when no advisor is available to help with a decision. The aim of our study was to determine if we can change participant's intertemporal and risky decisions by asking them to take the perspective of a peer, an expert or an entrepreneur. To test whether we can change participant's choices we have measured the behavior of 227 participants in Study 1 and 186 participants in Study 2. In out studies University students made choices using computerized multiple staircase discounting task. In a series of two experiments, we found that taking the peer's perspective made participants behave more impulsively and more risk aversely in relation to the participants' own perspectives. Taking the peer's perspective made participants behave more impulsively and more risk aversely in relation to an expert's or entrepreneur's perspective. Taking an expert's or an entrepreneur's perspective did not change participants' own intertemporal and risky decisions.

The purpose of the present study was to examine a relation between delay discounting and texting while driving from a behavioral economic perspective. A sample of 64 college students completed a survey to assess how frequently they send and read text messages while driving. Based on this information, groups of students who frequently text while driving and students who infrequently text while driving were identified. The groups were compared on the extent to which they discounted a putative social reinforcer obtained through exchanging text messages. In a novel discounting task using a hypothetical scenario in which students receive a text message while driving, they rated their likelihood of replying to a text message immediately versus waiting to reply for a certain period of time from 30 s to 6 h. The results show that the rate at which the likelihood to wait decreased as a function of delay was greater for students who frequently text while driving than students who infrequently text while driving. The results also show that the decrease in the likelihood to wait is well described by a hyperbolic delay-discounting function, which has descriptive and predictive utility in understanding texting while driving and other impulsive behaviors.

Impulsivity predicts obesity and binge-eating disorder (Thamotharan, Lange, Zale, Huffhines, & Fields, 2013; Pearson, Zapolski, & Smith, 2015); however, not everyone with binge-eating disorder is overweight, and many overweight individuals do not meet the criteria for binge-eating disorder. Obesity and binge-eating have also been demonstrated to occur independently in a rat model (Boggiano, Artiga, Pritchette, Chandler-Laney, & Eldridge, 2007). In the current experiment, 10 male Wistar rats completed three conditions in counterbalanced order: (1) binge-eating measured by consumption of intermittently available Double Stuf Oreo cookies, (2) diet-induced obesity proneness measured by weight gain when provided with a sweet high-fat diet ad libitum for 2 consecutive weeks, as well as (3) impulsivity assessed with a delay discounting task. Findings indicate that impulsivity predicted binge-eating but not diet-induced obesity, and that binge-eating and proneness to diet-induced obesity were unrelated to each other. Binge-eating disorder and obesity are serious, unresolved societal issues; a more complete understanding of the psychological, physiological, and behavioral components of these conditions is needed in order to develop more effective and targeted treatments.

Previous research showed that delay discounting is a unique predictor of obesity in young adults, as measured by body-mass index (BMI). Outside of impulsivity, eating and overeating occurs in a social setting spanning close friends and relatives, along with a larger cultural context. Social discounting is a measure that is related to impulsivity, but also uniquely measures aspects of sharing as a function of social proximity. A total of 804 college students completed both demographic and discounting measures across two online studies. Table 1 shows the Pearsons r correlation coefficients for the relationships between measures. Unlike previous research, neither study showed a relationship between delay discounting and BMI. Likewise, there was no direct relationship between social discounting and BMI. However, consistent with previous research, there were significant relationships between delay and social discounting, and age and BMI. In addition, BMI was sensitive to self-reported exercise patterns, suggesting that BMI was a valid predictor of obesity in the current study. We discuss why there may have been discrepancies between our results and those that had previously shown a relationship between BMI and discounting measures.

The gambling literature suggests a relation between how one answers discounting questions (assessments of risk and impulsivity) and the degree one is identified as having problems with gambling. One area of skilled gambling, poker, may defy conventional wisdom in that poker players may be potentially identified as being problem gamblers, given their commitment and investment to the activity, even though their actions may be risk-averse and non-impulsive. This study seeks to start a series of investigations into the relation between poker players' discounting assessments and measures with respect to problem gambling as a function of their level of expertise. This will be accomplished through several measures and poker scenarios delivered in an online format, and measures of delay and probability discounting. The discounting questions cover a variety of topics, and the poker scenarios a variety of in-game situations. In this initial study a relationship between answering the poker questions correctly and discounting is suggested.

We has been studying on the relation between response cost and reward amount in a self-control task. Tajima (2007, 2014) reported the need for the schedule thinning procedure to increase high-cost high-reward choices over low-cost low-reward choices. But in our last experiments, all participants continued to choose high-cost high-reward alternative from the beginning (Baba & Mochizuki, 2015). In this experiment we removed the forced choice trials to equalize the procedure to Tajima's experiment, and tried to replicate Tajima's results. University students experienced five sessions of concurrent-chains procedure. The concurrent-chains has two alternatives and they were different in fixed-ratio (FR) value and reinforcement amount. The schedules of terminal links were concurrent (conc.) FR 5 (5) FR 40 (60) in the first session and changed to conc. FR 20 (20) FR 20 (20), conc. FR 16 (16) FR 24 (36), conc. FR 10 (10) FR 30 (45), and conc. FR 5 (5) FR 40 (60) (Values in parentheses show reinforcement points which was exchangeable for money). Three of four participants always chose high-cost high-reward, and only one showed gradual increase in high-cost high-reward choice. Experiment is ongoing with more participants and some other values of FR and reinforcement points.

Gambling persistence can be considered as the duration an individual continues to gamble after the gambling activity no longer produces wins. Factors that increase gambling persistence are important to identify for understanding maladaptive gambling behavior. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of response-independent food and drink delivery on gambling persistence with a focus on single-subject analysis. Six female undergraduate students from a Midwestern university each attended two sessions and participated in two of three conditions. The participants played on a simulated slot machine which only produced wins during the first 30 plays, afterwards all plays only produced losses. As the participants began their 30th play they were informed of the status of food and drink delivery for that session, as well as given food and drink if applicable. Participants were able to eat and drink as per their leisure, and were informed they could leave at any time. All four participants who compared food and drink conditions to the no food and drink condition persisted longer when food and drink were available, and the two participants who completed food and drink conditions in both sessions persisted longer when they consumed more food and drink.

The Powerball lottery has been available for over two decades, producing significant income for its 47 participating member states (over $2 billion in 2014) with jackpots sometimes exceeding $600 million. To assess the association of jackpot size and ticket demand, sales and jackpot records were collected for all Powerball drawings held between April 1992 and May 2015 (n=2393). With each successive occurrence of the same prize level, per capita sales attracted by all prize levels tended to decline, and this public discounting of prize value was greatest for the largest prizes. Jackpot devaluation exceeded that of inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI-W). At the same time, very large jackpots (>$150M), once claimed, were associated with induction of demand for the subsequent game, even though its jackpots were reset to beginning levels (e.g., $20-40M). While demand tended to increase as prizes rose above $50 million, time series suggest that first-instance jackpot sizes of $151-175M, $226-250M, and $276-300M commanded the highest break and run sales. Overall, ever-larger jackpots are needed to maintain demand for lottery games.