CONTROL OF IMPULSIVE CHOICE THROUGH BIASING INSTRUCTIONS

Abstract

College students repeatedly chose between an immediate, small reinforcer (viewing animated cartoons for 15 s then waiting 75 s before the next trial) and a delayed, large reinforcer (a delay of 55 s, then a viewing period of 25 s, followed by 10 s of waiting). Participants were classified as impulsive if, in Session 1, they chose the immediate, small reinforcer on at least 70 % of trials, or as self-controlled if they chose it on 30 % or less. In Session 2, informing impulsive participants about how much viewing time each schedule offered reduced but did not eliminate impulsive responding. Informing self-controlled participants about the different delays had no effect. Giving information consistent with previous preferences resulted in continuation of those preferences. The perSistence of impulsive responding despite contrary instructions suggests a heightened tendency to discount the value of delayed reinforcers, a process implicated in drug

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.