title: Reward: commentary. Temporal discounting in conduct disorder: toward an experience-adaptation hypothesis of the role of psychosocial insecurity.
abstract: Young people with conduct disorder often experience histories of psychosocial adversity and socioeconomic insecurity. For these individuals, real-world future outcomes are not only delayed in their delivery but also highly uncertain. Under such circumstances, accentuated time preference (extreme favoring of the present over the future) is a rational response to the everyday reality of social and economic transactions. Building on this observation, the author sets out the hypothesis that the exaggerated temporal discounting displayed by individuals with conduct disorder reported by White et al. (2014) is an adaptation to chronic exposure to psychosocial insecurity during development. The author postulates that this adaptation leads to (a) a decision-making bias whereby delay and uncertainty are coded as inseparable characteristics of choice outcomes and/or (b) reprogramming of the brain networks regulating intertemporal decision making. Future research could explore the putative role of environmental exposures to adversity in the development of exaggerated temporal discounting in conduct disorder as well as the mediating role of putative cognitive and neurobiological adaptations.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Disorders of Impulse and Attention, University of Southampton, and Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University.
authors.forename: Edmund J S
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Sonuga-Barke
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D019955:Conduct Disorder; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012201:Reward