Preference on cash-choice task predicts externalizing outcomes in 17-year-olds.
Delay-discounting, the tendency to prefer a smaller-sooner reward to a larger-later reward, has been associated with a range of externalizing behaviors. Laboratory delay-discounting tasks have emerged as a useful measure to index impulsivity and a proclivity towards externalizing pyschopathology. While many studies demonstrate the existence of a latent externalizing factor that is heritable, there have been few genetic studies of delay-discounting. Further, the increased vulnerability for risky behavior in adolescence makes adolescent samples an attractive target for future research, and expeditious, ecologically-valid delay-discounting measures are helpful in this regard. The primary goal of this study was to help validate the utility of a "cash-choice" measure for use in a sample of older adolescents. We used a sample of 17-year-old twins (n = 791) from the Minnesota Twin Family Enrichment study. Individuals who chose the smaller-sooner reward were more likely to have used a range of addictive substances, engaged in sexual intercourse, and earned lower GPAs. Best fitting biometric models from univariate analyses supported the heritability of cash-choice and externalizing, but bivariate modeling results indicated that the correlation between cash-choice and externalizing was determined largely by shared environmental influences, thus failing to support cash-choice as a possible endophenotype for externalizing in this age group. Our findings lend further support to the utility of cash-choice as a measure of individual differences in decision making and suggest that, by late adolescence, this task indexes shared environmental risk for externalizing behavior.
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA, spark088@umn.edu.
Jordan C
JC
Sparks
Joshua D
JD
Isen
William G
WG
Iacono
D000293:Adolescent; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D012201:Reward; D012309:Risk-Taking