Testing the factor structure underlying behavior using joint cognitive models: Impulsivity in delay discounting and Cambridge gambling tasks.

Abstract

Neurocognitive tasks are frequently used to assess disordered decision making, and cognitive models of these tasks can quantify performance in terms related to decision makers' underlying cognitive processes. In many cases, multiple cognitive models purport to describe similar processes, but it is difficult to evaluate whether they measure the same latent traits or processes. In this article, we develop methods for modeling behavior across multiple tasks by connecting cognitive model parameters to common latent constructs. This approach can be used to assess whether 2 tasks measure the same dimensions of cognition, or actually improve the estimates of cognitive models when there are overlapping cognitive processes between 2 related tasks. The approach is then applied to connecting decision data on 2 behavioral tasks that evaluate clinically relevant deficits, the delay discounting task and Cambridge gambling task, to determine whether they both measure the same dimension of impulsivity. We find that the discounting rate parameters in the models of each task are not closely related, although substance users exhibit more impulsive behavior on both tasks. Instead, temporal discounting on the delay discounting task as quantified by the model is more closely related to externalizing psychopathology like aggression, while temporal discounting on the Cambridge gambling task is related more to response inhibition failures. The methods we develop thus provide a new way to connect behavior across tasks and grant new insights onto the different dimensions of impulsivity and their relation to substance use.

Identifying relationships between cognitive processes across tasks, contexts, and time

“…Parameters which are related will then show up as correlated, and statistical borrowing of strength will take place via the covariance matrix. New work reported by Kvam et al (2020) takes a related approach to ours, aiming to borrow information across different testing tasks in a clinical sample, they demonstrate improved estimation precision in their joint modeling approach.…”

“…There are likely to be important issues that need to be resolved in future, in order to make that work. discuss how methodological differences between cognitive tasks and psychometric tests emphasize different psychometric properties which can make it difficult to draw consistent inferences between them (but see also Kvam et al, 2020).…”

The problems with delay discounting: a critical review of current practices and clinical applications

“…In fact, we would suggest an opposite course of action. We believe researchers should look to embrace assessment and scoring methods that collect sufficient amounts of data and then model all the collected trial-level data (Dai & Busemeyer, 2014 ; Dai, Gunn, Gerst, Busemeyer, & Finn, 2016 ; Kvam et al, 2021 ; Molloy et al, 2020 ). This is in contrast to the majority of discounting scoring practices that rely on indifference points for each time-delay (e.g.…”

“…Discounting rates are only modestly related to addiction severity based on meta-analysis ( r = 0.14; Amlung et al, 2017 ), which must call into question how ‘core’ this process can be if it accounts for ~2% of the variance of symptom severity. Moreover, discounting rates are largely uncorrelated with other measures of impulsivity, which call into question the hypothesized relationship between discounting and addiction (Amlung et al, 2017 ; Kvam, Romeu, Turner, Vassileva, & Busemeyer, 2021 ; MacKillop et al, 2016 ; Sharma, Markon, & Clark, 2014 ). Delay discounting rates are not synonymous with impulsive decision-making as they are sometimes used in the literature.…”

Individual Differences in Intertemporal Choice

“…Future studies may also further explore this area by going beyond studying reaction times and error rates of inhibitory tasks, instead employing model parameters derived from models of task performance (e.g., Ulrich et al, 2015;Aponte et al, 2017) and relating these to temporal discounting parameters (Kvam et al, 2020).…”