Future thinking is related to lower delay discounting than recent thinking, regardless of the magnitude of the reward, in individuals with schizotypy

Abstract

Objective People often prefer immediate small rewards compared to delayed larger rewards, which is referred to delay discounting. Schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, tends to discount more than healthy controls. Episodic future thinking (EFT), in which people mentally simulate future events to pre‐experience the future, has been found to reduce delay discounting in the general population, but whether this effect can be found in individuals with schizotypy remains unknown. The present study examined, in individuals with schizotypy, whether EFT was associated with lower delay discounting compared to episodic recent thinking (ERT), and whether this effect was related to the magnitude of reward. Method A total of 63 individuals with schizotypy were randomly assigned to the EFT condition (n = 30) or the ERT condition (n = 33). A delay discounting task with both large and small reward conditions was used, and before making choices, participants were asked to vividly think about a future event (EFT condition) or a recent past event (ERT condition). Results Results showed that participants in the EFT condition showed lower delay discounting rate than participants in the ERT condition, regardless of the magnitude of reward. These findings suggest that EFT enhanced the ability to resist immediate reward and had an effect on impulsive decision‐making in schizotypy. Conclusions These results provided crucial insights for developing effective intervention for schizophrenia.

A meta-analysis of the effects of episodic future thinking on delay discounting

“…The DD paradigm can be divided into two types: the fixed task in which the amount of reward is fixed, not influenced by participants’ choices, and the varied task in which the amount of reward changed according to participants’ responses. Both paradigms showed medium and similar sized effects of EFT on DD (Bromberg et al, 2017; Jia et al, 2020). These results suggested that the effect of EFT was stable across DD paradigms.…”

“…This might be because a longer delay was associated with a higher DD. EFT could broaden the temporal window and shorten the subjective duration, and this effect was stronger during longer delays (Jia et al, 2020; Snider et al, 2016; Sze et al, 2017).…”

“…The delay time may be a potential variable that influences the effect of EFT on DD. In addition, some studies used area under the curve (AUC) as the index of DD (Athamneh et al, 2020; Jia et al, 2020), while some other studies used k (discounting rate) as the index of DD (Dassen et al, 2016; Wu et al, 2017); it might be useful to examine whether different effects would be found with different indices.…”