Avni Rathi
Research Mentor: Fiona Molloy
Mentor Department: Addiction Center, Psychiatry, Medicine
Author(s): Avni Rathi, Fiona Molloy
Session: Session 5 (2:00 PM – 2:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 88
Abstract
Effort discounting refers to the rate at which individuals determine the subjective value of a reward based on the amount of effort required to obtain it. This rate is most commonly measured through a series of tasks that reveal the participant’s choice behavior and preferences, and varies widely across and within individuals. Our research focused on investigating the association between effort discounting and cognitive control. Cognitive control was assessed using the Stroop, Flanker, and Simon tasks where individuals must make decisions in trials with and without distracting, task-irrelevant stimuli. Individual differences in cognitive control were quantified by a response time-based measure of the conflict effect in the Stroop, Flanker and Simon tasks, while individual-differences in effort discounting were quantified by computing an AUC (area under the curve) measure of behavior in the COG-ED task. We first conducted exploratory analyses of demographic associations with effort discounting and cognitive control. After finding this, we tested individual effort discounting rate’s association with the previously identified measures of cognitive control using linear regression models, controlling for confounding variables. We initially found a weak negative association between effort discounting (AUC) and conflict effect at the individual and group level, but after controlling for covariates such as race, age, education and income level, and sex, we found no significant association between effort discounting rate and cognitive control test scores. Future work will utilize more advanced computational models to dissociate decision-making processes underlying behavior in these tasks to identify the mechanistic driving the relationship between cognitive control and effort discounting.
