Consumer choices with variations in item price, delay, and opportunity cost.

Tversky and Kahneman (1981) told participants to imagine they were at a store about to purchase an item. They were asked if they would be willing to drive 20 min to another store to receive a $5 discount on the item's price. Most participants were willing, but only when the original price of the item was small ($15); when the original price was relatively large ($125), most said they would not drive 20 min for a $5 discount.

Tests of an indifference rule in variable-delay and double-reward choice procedures with humans.

Four hundred and fifty participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk across 3 experiments to test the predictions of a hyperbolic discounting equation in accounting for human choices involving variable delays or multiple rewards (Mazur, 1984, 1986). In Experiment 1, participants made hypothetical choices between 2 monetary alternatives, 1 consisting of a fixed delay and another consisting of 2 delays of equal probability (i.e.

An overview of Bayesian reasoning in the analysis of delay-discounting data.

Statistical inference (including interval estimation and model selection) is increasingly used in the analysis of behavioral data. As with many other fields, statistical approaches for these analyses traditionally use classical (i.e.

Automating Scoring of Delay Discounting for the 21- and 27-Item Monetary Choice Questionnaires.

Delay discounting describes the process wherein rewards lose value as a function of their delayed receipt; how quickly rewards lose value is termed the rate of delay discounting. Rates of delay discounting are robust predictors of much behavior of societal importance. One efficient approach to obtaining a human subject's rate of delay discounting is via the 21- and 27-item Monetary Choice Questionnaires, brief dichotomous choice tasks that assess preference between small immediate and larger delayed monetary outcomes.

Human choices between variable and fixed rewards in hypothetical variable-delay and double-reward discounting procedures.

Prior research has shown that nonhumans show an extreme preference for variable- over fixed-delays to reinforcement. This well-established preference for variability occurs because a reinforcer's strength or "value" decreases according to a curvilinear function as its delay increases. The purpose of the present experiments was to investigate whether this preference for variability occurs with human participants making hypothetical choices.

A Quantitative Analysis and Natural History of B. F. Skinner's Coauthoring Practices.

This paper describes and analyzes B. F. Skinner's coauthoring practices.

Delay discounting is associated with treatment response among cocaine-dependent outpatients.

Delay discounting (DD) describes the rate at which reinforcers lose value as the temporal delay to their receipt increases. Steeper discounting has been positively associated with vulnerability to substance use disorders, including cocaine use disorders. In the present study, we examined whether DD of hypothetical monetary reinforcers is associated with the duration of cocaine abstinence achieved among cocaine-dependent outpatients.

On the scaling interpretation of exponents in hyperboloid models of delay and probability discounting.

Previously, we (McKerchar et al., 2009) showed that two-parameter hyperboloid models (Green and Myerson, 2004; Rachlin, 2006) provide significantly better fits to delay discounting data than simple, one-parameter hyperbolic and exponential models. Here, we extend this effort by comparing fits of the two-parameter hyperboloid models to data from a larger sample of participants (N=171) who discounted probabilistic as well as delayed rewards.

A comparison of four models of delay discounting in humans.

The present study compared four prominent models of delay discounting: a one-parameter exponential decay, a one-parameter hyperbola [Mazur, J.E., 1987.

Differential acquisition of lever pressing in inbred and outbred mice: comparison of one-lever and two-lever procedures and correlation with differences in locomotor activity.

Recent progress in mouse genetics has led to an increased interest in developing procedures for assessing mouse behavior, but relatively few of the behavioral procedures developed involve positively reinforced operant behavior. When operant methods are used, nose poking, not lever pressing, is the target response. In the current study differential acquisition of milk-reinforced lever pressing was observed in five inbred strains (C57BL/6J, DBA/2J, 129X1/SvJ, C3H/HeJ, and BALB/cJ) and one outbred stock (CD-1) of mice.

Use of a force-plate actometer for detecting and quantifying vertical leaping induced by amphetamine in BALB/cJ mice, but not in C57BL/6J, DBA/2J, 129X1/SvJ, C3H/HeJ, and CD-1 mice.

The force-plate actometer is a relatively new computer-based instrument with high temporal and spatial resolution that has been used to measure the behavioral effects of genetic restriction (e.g., inbred mice) and drugs (e.

Effects of risperidone on destructive behavior of persons with developmental disabilities: III. Functional analysis.

Functional analyses were conducted during a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the atypical antipsychotic medication risperidone with 13 individuals. Risperidone was effective in reducing destructive behavior (compared to placebo) for 10 participants. For 7 of these responders, an undifferentiated pattern of responding occurred across their baseline functional analysis conditions (i.