The Effects of Acute Stress on the Calibration of Persistence

People frequently fail to wait for delayed rewards after choosing them. These preference reversals are sometimes thought to reflect self-control failure. Other times, however, continuing to wait for a delayed reward may be counterproductive (e.g., when reward timing uncertainty is high). Research has demonstrated that people can calibrate how long to wait for rewards in a given environment. Thus, the role of self-control might be to integrate information about the environment to flexibly adapt behavior, not merely to promote waiting. Here we tested effects of acute stress, which has been shown to tax control processes, on persistence, and the calibration of persistence, in young adult human participants. Half the participants (n = 60) performed a task in which persistence was optimal, and the other half (n = 60) performed a task in which it was optimal to quit waiting for reward soon after each trial began. Each participant completed the task either after cold pressor stress or no stress. Stress did not influence persistence or optimal calibration of persistence. Nevertheless, an exploratory analysis revealed an “inverted-U” relationship between cortisol increase and performance in the stress groups, suggesting that choosing the adaptive waiting policy may be facilitated with some stress and impaired with severe stress

The Confidence Database

Understanding how people rate their confidence is critical for the characterization of a wide range of perceptual, memory, motor and cognitive processes. To enable the continued exploration of these processes, we created a large database of confidence studies spanning a broad set of paradigms, participant populations and fields of study. The data from each study are structured in a common, easy-to-use format that can be easily imported and analysed using multiple software packages. Each dataset is accompanied by an explanation regarding the nature of the collected data. At the time of publication, the Confidence Database (which is available at https://osf.io/s46pr/) contained 145 datasets with data from more than 8,700 participants and almost 4 million trials. The database will remain open for new submissions indefinitely and is expected to continue to grow. Here we show the usefulness of this large collection of datasets in four different analyses that provide precise estimations of several foundational confidence-related effects

Factors Affecting Temporal Discounting in Older Adults

While most people discount future rewards and consequences to at least some extent, the degree of temporal discounting varies widely from person to person. These individual differences, in turn, are associated with a host of risky behaviors, such as smoking, overeating, gambling, borrowing excessively on credit cards and texting while driving. This study looks at the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying temporal discounting, so more targeted interventions can be developed to minimize its harmful effects

Declarative memory, but not executive function, is associated with temporal discounting in older adults

People often make decisions involving trade-offs between smaller immediate and larger delayed rewards. In intertemporal choices such as these, individuals tend to discount the value of future rewards, a tendency known as temporal discounting. Most people exhibit some degree of temporal discounting, but the rate at which people discount future rewards varies widely. Two neurocognitive systems have been proposed as potential candidates for mediating individual differences in discounting: executive function and declarative memory. Both of these functions decline as people age, at rates that vary across individuals. Here we leverage this variability in cognitive abilities among older adults (both cognitively normal and with mild cognitive impairment, MCI) to investigate associations between temporal discounting and executive function versus declarative memory. We find that neuropsychological measures of declarative memory (episodic memory retrieval and semantic fluency), but not executive function (Trail Making Test and lexical fluency), are associated with temporal discounting. People with better memory discount delayed rewards less. Consistent with this, individuals diagnosed with MCI show steeper discount rates compared to cognitively normal older adults. In contrast, executive function, but not declarative memory, is associated with the extent to which an individual is risk-neutral, or expected-value maximizing, in a risky choice task. These findings elucidate the inconsistent literature on aging and economic preferences, and they suggest that distinct neural systems mediate individual differences in the risk and time domain

Factors Affecting Temporal Discounting in Older Adults

While most people discount future rewards and consequences to at least some extent, the degree of temporal discounting varies widely from person to person. These individual differences, in turn, are associated with a host of risky behaviors, such as smoking, overeating, gambling, borrowing excessively on credit cards and texting while driving. This study looks at the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying temporal discounting, so more targeted interventions can be developed to minimize its harmful effects