TY - JOUR
T1 - On the functional form of temporal discounting
T2 - An optimized adaptive test
AU - Cavagnaro, Daniel R.
AU - Aranovich, Gabriel J.
AU - McClure, Samuel
AU - Pitt, Mark A.
AU - Myung, Jay I.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - The tendency to discount the value of future rewards has become one of the best-studied constructs in the behavioral sciences. Although hyperbolic discounting remains the dominant quantitative characterization of this phenomenon, a variety of models have been proposed and consensus around the one that most accurately describes behavior has been elusive. To help bring some clarity to this issue, we propose an Adaptive Design Optimization (ADO) method for fitting and comparing models of temporal discounting. We then conduct an ADO experiment aimed at discriminating among six popular models of temporal discounting. Rather than supporting a single underlying model, our results show that each model is inadequate in some way to describe the full range of behavior exhibited across subjects. The precision of results provided by ADO further identify specific properties of models, such as accommodating both increasing and decreasing impatience, that are mandatory to describe temporal discounting broadly.
AB - The tendency to discount the value of future rewards has become one of the best-studied constructs in the behavioral sciences. Although hyperbolic discounting remains the dominant quantitative characterization of this phenomenon, a variety of models have been proposed and consensus around the one that most accurately describes behavior has been elusive. To help bring some clarity to this issue, we propose an Adaptive Design Optimization (ADO) method for fitting and comparing models of temporal discounting. We then conduct an ADO experiment aimed at discriminating among six popular models of temporal discounting. Rather than supporting a single underlying model, our results show that each model is inadequate in some way to describe the full range of behavior exhibited across subjects. The precision of results provided by ADO further identify specific properties of models, such as accommodating both increasing and decreasing impatience, that are mandatory to describe temporal discounting broadly.
KW - Adaptive designs
KW - Design optimization
KW - Intertemporal choice
KW - Model selection
KW - Temporal discounting
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U2 - 10.1007/s11166-016-9242-y
DO - 10.1007/s11166-016-9242-y
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84987606127
SN - 0895-5646
VL - 52
SP - 233
EP - 254
JO - Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
JF - Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
IS - 3
ER -