Psychological models of temporal discounting have now successfully displaced classical economic theory due to the simple fact that many common behavior patterns, such as impulsivity, were unexplainable with classic models. However, the now dominant hyperbolic model of discounting is itself becoming increasingly strained. Numerous factors have arisen that alter discount rates with no means to in...

Poor air quality and resulting annual deaths represent significant public health concerns. Recently, rapid delay discounting (the devaluation of future outcomes) of air quality has been considered a potential barrier for engaging in long term, sustainable behaviors that might help to reduce emissions (e.g., reducing private car use, societal support for clean air initiatives). Delay discounting...

BACKGROUND Increasing evidence suggests that delay discounting may change following effective interventions. Nonetheless, previous studies that assessed the effect of contingency management (CM) on delay discounting are scarce, and their results are mixed. The current study assessed whether CM in conjunction with a cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) for smoking cessation was associated with c...

We study continuous-time stochastic games (with finitely many states and actions), with a focus on the existence of their equilibria that are insensitive to a small imprecision in the specification of players’ evaluations of streams of payoffs. We show that the stationary, namely, time-independent, discounting game has a stationary equilibrium, that the (not necessarily stationary) discounting ...

Humans and other animals discount the value of future rewards, a phenomenon known as delay discounting. Individuals vary widely in the extent to which they discount future rewards, and these tendencies have been associated with important life outcomes. Recent studies have demonstrated that imagining the future reduces subsequent discounting behavior, but no research to date has examined whether...

Organisms prefer to receive rewards sooner rather than later because they excessively discount the subjective value of future rewards, a phenomenon called delay discounting. Recent studies have reported an association between cortisol-which is secreted by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis-and delay discounting. However, no study has examined whether acutely induced psychosocial stre...

We conducted preference assessments with 4 typically developing children to identify potential reinforcers and assessed the reinforcing efficacy of those stimuli. Next, we tested two predictions of economic theory: that overall consumption (reinforcers obtained) would decrease as the unit price (response requirement per reinforcer) increased and that the cost and benefit components that defined...

A growing literature indicates that impulsivity is a fundamental behavioral process that underlies obesity. However, impulsivity is a multidimensional construct, which comprises independent patterns of decision-making that could be uniquely associated with obesity. No research to date has clarified whether obesity is differentially associated with specific behavioral aspects of impulsivity. Thi...

Excessive discounting of future rewards has been related to a variety of risky behaviors and adverse clinical conditions. Prior work examining delay discounting in schizophrenia suggests an elevated discount rate. However, it remains uncertain whether this reflects the disease process itself or an underlying genetic vulnerability, whether it is selective for delay discounting or reflects pervas...