Wesleyan University, USA.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2020 May;151:1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2020.02.006. Epub 2020 Feb 11.
It is well documented that individuals vary in their economic patience - their willingness to choose delayed larger rewards (e.g., $100 in a month) over immediate smaller rewards (e.g., $25 now) - and that high levels of impatience, or temporal discounting, can be behaviorally problematic. Using event-related potential (ERP) method, we investigated error monitoring, as indexed by the error related negativity (ERN) component, as a function of discounting behavior. This work builds on prior work on risky decision making that revealed that individuals have greater ERNs for trials in which they select a risky option over a certain one (Yu and Zhou 2009), especially individuals not inclined towards risk taking (Martin and Potts 2009). In the present study, participants completed a temporal discounting task (choosing between a fixed immediate reward versus a future reward that varied across trials) while electroencephalogram (EEG) activity was recorded. We found an asymmetric relationship between discounting and the ERN: the greater an individual's overall rate of discounting, the greater the ERN component of the ERP waveform on trials where the future reward was selected, but not on trials in which the immediate reward was selected. The ERN may reflect an early warning signal alerting high discounters to potential negative consequences of future-oriented choices.
有大量文献证明，个体在经济耐心方面存在差异——他们愿意选择延迟的更大奖励（例如，一个月后获得 100 美元），而不是即时的较小奖励（例如，现在获得 25 美元）——而高度的不耐烦或时间折扣可能会导致行为问题。我们使用事件相关电位（ERP）方法，研究了作为折扣行为的一种功能的错误监测，其由错误相关负波（ERN）成分来表示。这项工作基于先前关于风险决策的研究，该研究表明，对于那些选择风险选项而不是某个特定选项的试验，个体的 ERN 更大（于和周，2009 年），特别是那些不倾向于冒险的个体（马丁和波茨，2009 年）。在本研究中，参与者在完成时间折扣任务（在固定的即时奖励和未来奖励之间进行选择，未来奖励在试验中变化）的同时记录脑电图（EEG）活动。我们发现折扣和 ERN 之间存在不对称关系：个体的整体折扣率越高，在选择未来奖励的试验中，ERP 波形的 ERN 成分越大，但在选择即时奖励的试验中则不然。ERN 可能反映了一种早期预警信号，提醒高折扣者注意未来导向选择的潜在负面后果。
