Roberts Nicole J, Oravecz Zita, Sprague Briana N, Geier Charles F
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States.
Institute for CyberScience, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States.
Front Psychiatry. 2019 Jul 5;10:474. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00474. eCollection 2019.
Reaction time data from cognitive tasks continue to be a key way to assess decision-making in various contexts to better understand addiction. The goal of this paper is twofold: to introduce a nuanced modeling approach for reaction time data and to demonstrate the novel insights it can provide into the decision processes of nicotine-dependent individuals in different contexts. We focus on the Linear Approach to Threshold with Ergodic Rate (LATER) model, which is a cognitive process model that describes reaction time data in terms of two distinct aspects of cognitive functioning: speed of information accumulation ("accretion") and threshold amount of information needed prior to execution ("caution"). We introduce a novel hierarchical extension to the LATER model to simultaneously account for differences across persons and experimental conditions, both in the accretion and caution parameters. This approach allows for the inclusion of person-specific predictor variables to explain between-person variation in terms of accretion and caution together with condition-specific predictors to model experimental condition manipulations. To highlight the usefulness of this model, we analyze reaction time data from a study on adult daily cigarette smokers. Participants performed a monetary incentivized Go/No-Go task during two testing sessions, once while following their typical smoking patterns and again following 12 h of verified smoking abstinence. Our main results suggest that regardless of trial type, smokers in a period of abstinence have faster accretion rates, and lower caution thresholds relative to smoking as usual.
来自认知任务的反应时间数据仍然是评估各种情境下决策以更好理解成瘾问题的关键方式。本文的目标有两个：介绍一种针对反应时间数据的细致入微的建模方法，并展示它能为不同情境下尼古丁依赖个体的决策过程提供的新颖见解。我们聚焦于具有遍历率的阈值线性方法（LATER）模型，这是一种认知过程模型，它从认知功能的两个不同方面来描述反应时间数据：信息积累速度（“积累”）和执行前所需的信息阈值量（“谨慎”）。我们为LATER模型引入了一种新颖的分层扩展，以同时考虑个体和实验条件在积累和谨慎参数方面的差异。这种方法允许纳入个体特定的预测变量，以解释个体在积累和谨慎方面的差异，同时纳入特定条件的预测变量来对实验条件操作进行建模。为了突出该模型的实用性，我们分析了一项针对成年每日吸烟者的研究中的反应时间数据。参与者在两个测试阶段执行了一项金钱激励的Go/No-Go任务，一次是按照他们通常的吸烟模式，另一次是在经过12小时确认戒烟后。我们的主要结果表明，无论试验类型如何，处于戒断期的吸烟者相对于照常吸烟时具有更快的积累速度和更低的谨慎阈值。
