Dokument: Intertemporal decision making and the brain.
| Titel: | Intertemporal decision making and the brain. | |||||||
| URL für Lesezeichen: | https://docserv.uni-duesseldorf.de/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=44535 | |||||||
| URN (NBN): | urn:nbn:de:hbz:061-20180124-100416-2 | |||||||
| Kollektion: | Dissertationen | |||||||
| Sprache: | Englisch | |||||||
| Dokumententyp: | Wissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten » Dissertation | |||||||
| Medientyp: | Text | |||||||
| Autor: | MSc Seinstra, Maayke [Autor] | |||||||
| Dateien: |
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| Beitragende: | Prof. Dr. Kalenscher, Tobias [Gutachter] Prof. Dr. Schnitzler, Alfons [Gutachter] | |||||||
| Dewey Dezimal-Klassifikation: | 100 Philosophie und Psychologie » 150 Psychologie | |||||||
| Beschreibung: | Intertemporal decision making, where tradeoffs are made between differently timed rewards, is a well studied topic. The way we make intertemporal choices can have far reaching consequences on individual level, but also for society's economic well being. Intertemporal choice behavior is affected by many demographic, psychological, and physiological factors. It is therefore important to investigate the effects of specific relevant factors that make up the context in which these decisions are made, to gain insight in the underlying behavioral and neuronal mechanisms and to be able to predict intertemporal choice behavior. We investigated three specific choice contexts:
The world is ageing, and the (intertemporal) choices made by older adults have more impact on society. Different intertemporal choice behavior is observed in distinct age groups, but the effect of older age on choice behavior is relatively unclear. In one study (Chapter 2) we investigated the potentially mediating role of episodic memory performance on intertemporal choice behavior in older adults. We found that autobiographical memory performance and gender interact in determining older people's choice behavior. Intertemporal choice behavior is not only affected by trait factors, such as age, but also by diseases and specific treatments. In a second study (Chapter 3) we investigated the effect of subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS), a common treatment of Parkinson's disease, on intertemporal choice in Parkinson patients. We found no evidence of DBS treatment affecting choice behavior. This finding contributes to the notion that STN-DBS is a safe treatment option for Parkinson's disease when it comes to cognitive side effects. We further asked a more fundamental question to investigate which currency we actually maximize when we make intertemporal decisions (Chapter 4): do we maximize 'economic utility' in the form of a discounted value, as often suggested by (behavioral) economists, or do we maximize reward rate, as suggested by behavioral ecologists? We asked students to make a series of intertemporal choices with experienced delays, and found that we actually seem to maximize reward rate. Rate maximization may have led to the often observed 'immediacy effects', which could explain why hyperbolic-like discounting models often describe intertemporal choice behavior so well. | |||||||
| Lizenz: |  Urheberrechtsschutz | |||||||
| Fachbereich / Einrichtung: | Mathematisch- Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät » WE Psychologie » Experimentelle Biologische Psychologie | |||||||
| Dokument erstellt am: | 24.01.2018 | |||||||
| Dateien geändert am: | 24.01.2018 | |||||||
| Promotionsantrag am: | 19.05.2017 | |||||||
| Datum der Promotion: | 17.10.2017 |
