Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Roanoke, Virginia, United States of America.
Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2023 Aug 3;18(8):e0289478. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289478. eCollection 2023.
Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) reduces delay discounting and may have the potential as a clinical tool to increase the likelihood of health-promoting behaviors. However, evaluations of EFT in clinical settings require control conditions that match the effort and frequency of cue generation, as well as participants' expectations of improvement. The Health Information Thinking (HIT) control addresses these issues, but how this control affects delay discounting in individuals with diabetes and obesity when utilizing diabetes-management specific health-information vignettes is unknown. Moreover, little research has explored whether EFT reduces delay discounting in individuals with type 2 diabetes. To this end, we examined the impact of EFT, HIT, and a secondary no-cue control condition (NCC; assessments as usual) on delay discounting in 434 adults with self-reported type 2 diabetes and obesity recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk. After completing an initial screening questionnaire, eligible participants reported demographics, then were randomized to EFT, HIT, or NCC conditions. Following the generation of seven EFT or HIT cues, participants assigned to EFT or HIT conditions completed a delay discounting task while imagining EFT or HIT cues; no-cue participants completed the task without cues. EFT participants demonstrated significantly lower delay discounting levels than HIT or NCC participants; no differences in delay discounting between HIT and NCC participants were observed. These results suggest that engaging in EFT, but not diabetes-specific HIT, results in lower delay discounting in adults with type 2 diabetes and obesity. This provides further evidence for the appropriateness of the HIT control for clinical trials examining the effect of EFT on delay discounting in adults with self-reported type 2 diabetes.
片段式未来思考（EFT）可减少延迟折扣，且有可能成为一种临床工具，提高促进健康行为的可能性。然而，在临床环境中评估 EFT 需要对照条件，以匹配线索生成的努力和频率，以及参与者对改善的期望。健康信息思考（HIT）对照可解决这些问题，但当利用特定于糖尿病管理的健康信息小插曲时，这种对照如何影响糖尿病和肥胖患者的延迟折扣尚不清楚。此外，很少有研究探讨 EFT 是否可降低 2 型糖尿病患者的延迟折扣。为此，我们研究了 EFT、HIT 和次要的无线索对照条件（NCC；常规评估）对使用亚马逊 Mechanical Turk 招募的 434 名自我报告患有 2 型糖尿病和肥胖的成年人延迟折扣的影响。在完成初始筛选问卷后，符合条件的参与者报告了人口统计学信息，然后随机分配到 EFT、HIT 或 NCC 条件。在生成七个 EFT 或 HIT 线索后，分配到 EFT 或 HIT 条件的参与者在想象 EFT 或 HIT 线索的同时完成了延迟折扣任务；无线索参与者在没有线索的情况下完成了任务。EFT 参与者的延迟折扣水平明显低于 HIT 或 NCC 参与者；HIT 和 NCC 参与者的延迟折扣没有差异。这些结果表明，进行 EFT 但不是糖尿病特异性 HIT 可降低 2 型糖尿病和肥胖成年人的延迟折扣。这为 HIT 对照在临床试验中评估 EFT 对自我报告患有 2 型糖尿病的成年人的延迟折扣的影响提供了进一步的证据。
