Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2020 Jul 3;11(1):3365. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16852-y.
Discounting of future rewards is traditionally interpreted as evidence for an intrinsic preference in favor of sooner rewards. However, temporal discounting can also arise from internal uncertainty in value representations of future events, if one assumes that noisy mental simulations of the future are rationally combined with prior beliefs. Here, we further develop this idea by considering how simulation noise may be adaptively modulated by task demands, based on principles of rational inattention. We show how the optimal allocation of mental effort can give rise to the magnitude effect in intertemporal choice. In a re-analysis of two prior data sets, and in another experiment, we reveal several behavioral signatures of this theoretical account, tying choice stochasticity to the magnitude effect. We conclude that some aspects of temporal discounting may result from a cognitively plausible adaptive response to the costs of information processing.
未来奖励的折扣传统上被解释为偏好即时奖励的内在证据。然而，如果假设对未来事件的价值表示的噪声心理模拟是理性地与先验信念相结合的，那么未来奖励的折扣也可能源于内部不确定性。在这里，我们进一步发展了这一观点，考虑了基于理性忽视原理的情况下，任务需求如何自适应地调节模拟噪声。我们展示了如何通过最优分配心理努力来引起跨期选择中的幅度效应。在对两个先前数据集的重新分析和另一个实验中，我们揭示了该理论解释的几个行为特征，将选择随机性与幅度效应联系起来。我们的结论是，时间折扣的某些方面可能是对信息处理成本的一种认知上合理的适应反应。
