El Haj Mohamad, Boutoleau-Bretonnière Claire, Moustafa Ahmed, Allain Philippe
Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire, Nantes Université, Univ Angers, Nantes, France.
Centre Hospitalier de Tourcoing, Unité de Gériatrie, Tourcoing, France.
Appl Neuropsychol Adult. 2022 May-Jun;29(3):412-418. doi: 10.1080/23279095.2020.1764958. Epub 2020 May 19.
Temporal discounting refers to the tendency to prefer smaller sooner rewards over larger later rewards. Prior research has reported temporal discounting in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We thus investigated, in this study, the relationship between temporal discounting and future thinking in AD. The study included 40 patients with AD and 42 control participants. We invited participants, on a temporal discounting task, to choose between an immediate but smaller or a delayed but larger amount of money (e.g. "would you prefer 10 dollars today or 50 dollars after one month?"). We also invited the participants to imagine events that may happen in the future, a task known as future thinking. Analysis demonstrated a bias toward immediate rewards (i.e. temporal discounting) as well as difficulties to imagine specific future events in patients with AD. Critically, temporal discounting and future thinking in AD were significantly correlated. Generally speaking, a lack of thinking about the future may lead to impulsive behavior. More specifically, decline in future thinking in AD may limit the ability of patients to project themselves in time to consider outcomes of their decisions, resulting in a tendency to devaluate future rewards in favor of more imminent ones (i.e. temporal discounting).
时间折扣是指相较于延迟获得的更大奖励，更倾向于选择即刻获得的较小奖励的倾向。先前的研究报告了阿尔茨海默病（AD）中的时间折扣现象。因此，在本研究中，我们调查了AD中时间折扣与未来思维之间的关系。该研究纳入了40名AD患者和42名对照参与者。我们邀请参与者完成一项时间折扣任务，在即刻获得但金额较小的钱和延迟获得但金额较大的钱之间进行选择（例如，“你更愿意今天得到10美元还是一个月后得到50美元？”）。我们还邀请参与者想象未来可能发生的事件，这是一项被称为未来思维的任务。分析表明，AD患者存在对即刻奖励的偏好（即时间折扣），以及想象特定未来事件的困难。至关重要的是，AD中的时间折扣与未来思维显著相关。一般来说，缺乏对未来的思考可能会导致冲动行为。更具体地说，AD中未来思维的衰退可能会限制患者及时设想自身情况以考虑其决策结果的能力，从而导致倾向于贬低未来奖励而青睐更即时的奖励（即时间折扣）。
