Economic rationality in youth with emerging mood disorders.

Weinrabe, Angé; Chung, Hui-Kuan; Tymula, Agnieszka; Tran, James; Hickie, Ian B.

doi:10.1037/npe0000129

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Our analysis also provides a plausible mechanistic account of the irrationality in the picture task. A severe violation of GARP has been observed in individuals with impaired or less developed cognitive functions (Harbaugh et al, 2001;Camille et al, 2011;Chung et al, 2017) or with a mood disorder (Weinrabe et al, 2020). These findings support the notion that individuals' cognitive limitation or emotional state might contribute to economic irrationality (Kaufman, 1999;Loewenstein, 2000;Pham, 2007;Nitsch and Kalenscher, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Cross-species comparison of human and rodent primary reward consumption under budget constraints

Nitsch

Wingerden

et al. 2021

Preprint

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We live in a world of limited resources. Optimal use of resources is therefore of great importance for survival. Previous studies have shown that rodents optimize their allocation of a limited number of operant responses (akin to a finite budget) to trade for food rewards. Here, we propose a novel human cost-benefit decision paradigm translated from an economic choice task initially developed for rodents, to examine human consumption of primary rewards in a budget-constrained consumption scenario. In the first study, heterosexual male participants made effortful presses to obtain the opportunity to watch erotic pictures (task 1: picture task) or drink milk rewards (task 2: milk task) with a limited budget (i.e. finite total amount of presses). Participants adapted their choice allocation when the price (i.e. number of presses required to produce a reward) and the budget changed. We compared our participants' choice pattern to that of rodent consumers performing a matched economic decision task. Our cross-species comparison suggests that humans responded to price and budget changes in a similar way as rat consumers when purchasing milk rewards. However, this was not the case when purchasing the opportunity to watch picture rewards: compared to the milk task and to the rodent task, participants made more internally inconsistent choices in the picture task that failed to comply to the requirements of rational choice theory, despite otherwise identical task structure. We found non-linear changes in arousal state as a function of choice selection of rewards that might potentially underlie the increased choice inconsistency in the picture task. In two control experiments, we replicated our main findings. Our study shows that humans and rodents comply surprisingly well to the predictions of rational choice theory, but that deviations from the rational ideal can be elicited depending on the reward type.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Cross-species comparison of human and rodent primary reward consumption under budget constraints

Nitsch

Wingerden

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…This provides evidence of anxiety and biased attentional processes, especially so in major mood disorders (Murphy et al, 1999). A more recent empirical study, evaluating an Australian clinical youth population aged 18-25, found that economic decision-making was significantly impaired for young people suffering from anxiety (Weinrabe et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…As opposed to depression, clinical trait anxiety and its relationship to decisionmaking have not been well researched in the field of behavioural economics with its multidisciplinary capability (Hartley and Phelps, 2012). Overall, only one study (Weinrabe et al, 2020) evaluated youth with emerging mood disorders, with the emphasis on trait anxiety on choice preferences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multidisciplinary approach to evaluate the impact of emotional dysregulation on adolescent decision making

Weinrabe

Hickie

2021

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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Evaluating decision-making during youth is a complex area of research. Multiple factors influence the young person’s subjective decision-making at this stage of development. Sub-optimal decision-making can have lifelong consequences. Longer adolescence, life stressors, drugs and alcohol and adverse events impact the young person, making them vulnerable to emerging mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Behavioural economics with its cognitive and multidisciplinary approach examines decision-making in youth with emerging mood disorders, but few empirical studies exist outside of a laboratory setting. Of the few that apply a multidisciplinary approach, most focus on other mental disorders. This review qualitatively evaluates the decision science literature to firstly, investigate complex factors influencing decision-making between adolescence and young adulthood. Secondly, it investigates studies that have applied either a cognitive or multidisciplinary approach to evaluate how young people choose. With respect to the studies identified, this review found that as opposed to depression, clinical anxiety (trait) and its relationship to youth decision-making has not been well researched using the multidisciplinary approach. Studies that did apply this approach found that mood disordered young individuals overall performed worse than healthy controls. This review argues that applying the multidisciplinary approach to study subjective decision-making can provide an alternative measure to empirically evaluate early stages of psychopathology in a youth population. Investigating the critical time points where the decision process itself impacts affective states in individuals could further elucidate some of the challenges currently faced in decision-making studies.

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Risk tolerance in youth with emerging mood disorders

Weinrabe,

Tran,

Hickie

2023

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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Reward-seeking behavior drives adolescents toward risky decision-making. As compared to their older and younger peers, adolescents experience higher rates of anxiety and depressive disorders, leading to impaired decision-making with negative consequences. At two time points, separated by 6–8 weeks, we measured risky and ambiguous choices concurrently with levels of dysregulated emotion for youth aged 16–25 (N = 30, mean age 19.22 years, 19 males) attending a youth mental health clinic. The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (10 items) (K10), the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology Adolescent (17 items) (QIDS-A17) specifically designed for youth, and the Somatic and Psychological Health Report (12 items) (SPHERE-12) questionnaires were used to evaluate participant’s self-reported anxiety and depression scores. Risk and ambiguity tolerance was calculated at the individual and group level. At baseline, 25 (83%) participants were rated as experiencing a mental health condition, and 15 (50%) rated high on all three psychological questionnaires combined, scoring “severely” depressed and “severely” anxious. At follow-up, 25 returning participants, 80% (N = 20) remained distressed, with 11 continuing to rate high on all psychological scores. In Session 1, participants had a mean of approximately 14 risky choices (SD = 4.6), and 11 ambiguous choices (SD = 7.6), whilst in Session 2, participants’ mean equated to approximately 13 ambiguous choices (SD = 8.5), but their risk increased to 15 choices (SD = 6.5). Applying a multiple regression analysis at the group level, the data suggests that participants were risk averse (α = 0.55, SE = 0.05), and preferred making ambiguous choices (β = 0.25, SE = 0.04). These results suggest that high trait-like anxiety in youth is associated with risk intolerance. These findings may have implications for screening young people with emerging mood disorders.

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Economic rationality in youth with emerging mood disorders.

Cited by 3 publications

References 63 publications

Cross-species comparison of human and rodent primary reward consumption under budget constraints

Cross-species comparison of human and rodent primary reward consumption under budget constraints

A multidisciplinary approach to evaluate the impact of emotional dysregulation on adolescent decision making

Risk tolerance in youth with emerging mood disorders

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