Children's Sensitivity to Cost and Reward in Decision Making across Distinct Domains of Probability, Effort, and Delay
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Many behavioral paradigms used to study individuals' decision making tendencies do not capture the decision components that contribute to behavioral outcomes, such as differentiating decisions driven toward a reward from decisions driven away from a cost. This study tested a novel decision making task in a sample of 403 children (age 9 years) enrolled in an ongoing longitudinal study. The task consisted of 3 blocks representing distinct cost domains (delay, probability, effort) wherein children were presented with a deck of cards, each of which consisted of a reward and a cost. Children elected whether to accept or skip the card at each trial. Reward-cost pairs were selected using an adaptive algorithm to strategically sample the decision space in the fewest number of trials. Using person-specific regression models, decision preferences were quantified for each cost domain with respect to general tolerance (intercept), as well as parameters estimating the effect of incremental increases in reward or cost on the probability of accepting a card. Results support the relative independence of decision making tendencies across cost domains, with moderate correlations observed between tolerance for delay and effort. Specific decision parameters showed unique associations with cognitive and behavioral measures including executive function, academic motivation, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Evidence indicates that sensitivity to reward is an important factor in incentivizing decisions to work harder or wait longer. Dissociating the relative contributions of reward and cost sensitivity in multiple domains may facilitate the identification of heterogeneity in sub-optimal decision making.
DOI: 10.1002/bdm.2038
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Science Foundation, Pennsylvania State University, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Children Living in Rural Poverty: The Continuation of the Family Life Project, CAREER: Genes, Environments, and Experiences in the Phenotypic Development of Cost Discounting and High Risk Decision Making, Toward a Unifying Model of Self-Regulation and its Development, Stress, Self-Regulation and Psychopathology in Middle Childhood, Population Research Institute, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute, The Population Research Institute, Prevention and Methodology Training
OpenAlex ID: W2752867729