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Excessively devaluing delayed reinforcers co-occurs with a wide variety of clinical conditions such as drug dependence, obesity, and excessive gambling. If excessive delay discounting is a trans-disease process that underlies the choice behavior leading to these and other negative health conditions, efforts to change an individual's discount rate are arguably important. Although discount rate is often regarded as a relatively stable trait, descriptions of interventions and environmental manipulations that successfully alter discount rate have begun to appear in the literature. In this review, we compare published examples of procedures that change discount rate and classify them into categories of procedures, including therapeutic interventions, direct manipulation of the executive decision-making system, framing effects, physiological state effects, and acute drug effects. These changes in discount rate are interpreted from the perspective of the competing neurobehavioral decision systems theory, which describes a combination of neurological and behavioral processes that account for delay discounting. We also suggest future directions that researchers could take to identify the mechanistic processes that allow for changes in discount rate and to test whether the competing neurobehavioral decision systems view of delay discounting is correct. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Excessively devaluing delayed reinforcers co-occurs with a wide variety of clinical conditions such as drug dependence, obesity, and excessive gambling. If excessive delay discounting is a trans-disease process that underlies the choice behavior leading to these and other negative health conditions, efforts to change an individual's discount rate are arguably important. Although discount rate is often regarded as a relatively stable trait, descriptions of interventions and environmental manipulations that successfully alter discount rate have begun to appear in the literature. In this review, we compare published examples of procedures that change discount rate and classify them into categories of procedures, including therapeutic interventions, direct manipulation of the executive decision-making system, framing effects, physiological state effects, and acute drug effects. These changes in discount rate are interpreted from the perspective of the competing neurobehavioral decision systems theory, which describes a combination of neurological and behavioral processes that account for delay discounting. We also suggest future directions that researchers could take to identify the mechanistic processes that allow for changes in discount rate and to test whether the competing neurobehavioral decision systems view of delay discounting is correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ninety-four smokers completed the delay discounting procedure for either hypothetical amounts of money, $10 (money) and $1000 (money) or hypothetical amounts of cigarettes ($10 and $1000 worth of cigarettes). We investigated how variables previously found to be related to rates of delay discounting accounted for the observed results. These variables included the following: demographic information, smoking characteristics, executive function abilities, impulsivity, time perception, and the Utility Measure of Cigarette Reinforcing Efficacy (UMCE). Education level and UMCE were each significantly correlated with 3 out of 4 of the discounting measures. Moreover, the largest effect sizes observed were between these two measures and the four discounting measures. All potential discounting predictors were also investigated using step-wise linear regression with Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) analysis—these BIC models revealed that education level and UMCE accounted for large portions of the variance. We conclude that education level and UMCE were the most consistent predictors of discounting. This data is discussed within the framework of a widely accepted neuroeconomic model that suggests that two brain systems separately assess two separate facets of decision-making, and the interplay between these two systems determines self-control in smokers. We hypothesize that education level and UMCE may serve as surrogate measures of the functionality of these two systems and that discounting may be a sentinel measure of self-control., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)