Toward a Unifying Account of Impulsivity and the Development of Self-Control

Abstract

Impulsivity has traditionally been thought to involve various behavioral traits that can be measured using different laboratory protocols. Whereas some authors regard different measures of impulsivity as reflecting fundamentally distinct and unrelated behavioral tendencies (fragmentation approach), others regard those different indexes as analogue forms of the same behavioral tendency, only superficially different (unification approach). Unifying accounts range from mere intuitions to more sophisticated theoretical systems. Some of the more complete attempts at unifying are intriguing but have validity weaknesses. We propose a new unifying attempt based on theoretical points posed by other authors and supplemented by theory and research on associative learning. We then apply these assumptions to characterize the paradigms used to study impulsivity in laboratory settings and evaluate their scope as an attempt at unification. We argue that our approach possesses a good balance of parsimony and empirical and theoretical grounding, as well as a more encompassing scope, and is more suitable for experimental testing than previous theoretical frameworks. In addition, the proposed approach is capable of generating a new definition of impulsivity and outlines a hypothesis of how self-control can be developed. Finally, we examine the fragmentation approach from a different perspective, emphasizing the importance of finding similarities among seemingly different phenomena.

The Role of the Lateral Habenula in Inhibitory Learning from Reward Omission

“…Disappointment, frustration, and discomfort stemming from worse than expected outcomes are useful for directing behavior to adaptive ways of interaction with our surroundings (see For instance, some authors have proposed that a pervasive reward learning process (Chow, Smith, Wilson, Zentall and Beckmann, 2017;Sosa and dos Santos, 2019a) can explain maladaptive decision-making in impulsive and risk-taking behaviors. This may arise in part from a deficit in learning from negative reward prediction errors (Laude, Stagner and Zentall, 2014; Sosa and dos Santos, 2019b) (see Figure 5 dark aqua arrow).…”

Psychometric Properties of the Escala de Avaliação da Impulsividade (EsAvI) by the Gradual Response Model

“…From the behavioral perspective, it is characterized by rapid, unplanned, and generally incorrect and inefficient motor actions (Barratt 1993). From a cognitive perspective, people with a high level of impulsivity tend to make quick and unthinking decisions without a prior judgment of the consequences (Hamilton et al 2015); they seek novelties, tend to be more inattentive, and present low inhibitory control (Sosa and Santos 2018). From a personality perspective, impulsive people tend to present high levels of extraversion and low levels of neuroticism and conscientiousness (Hauck-Filho et al 2018).…”

Effect of Schedule-Induced Behavior on Responses of Spontaneously Hypertensive and Wistar–Kyoto Rats in a Delay-Discounting Task: A Preliminary Report

“…On the other hand, impulsivity has been operationally defined in animal behavior research as a preference for smaller immediate reinforcers over large delayed ones (Fox et al, 2008; Hamilton et al, 2015), as an aversion to the delay (Sonuga-Barke et al, 1992; Richards et al, 2011), or as the inability to wait or to withhold a response (Richards et al, 2011). Although the operational definition of impulsivity seems to be heterogeneous as well, Sosa and dos Santos (2019) argue that different paradigms study the same behavioral tendency.…”

“…Impulsivity has been studied using different standardized intertemporal choice procedures, like the simple- and adjusting-delay discounting tasks (Sosa and dos Santos, 2019). One of the advantages of using standardized procedures is that they facilitate the comparison of analogous behaviors across species (Richards et al, 2011), although in some cases standardization is reduced due to methodological changes associated with accommodating the procedures to various species (Sjoberg, 2017).…”

“…Seemingly, schedule-induced behaviors can make waiting-time less aversive, so having the opportunity to engage in them should make organisms more self-controlled. Furthermore, DRL schedules and the peak procedure have been considered tasks that also measure impulsivity (see Pellón et al, 2018), although they were not designed to study choice (Mattel and Portugal, 2007; Sosa and dos Santos, 2019). Better performance on these tasks would imply that subjects are behaving more self-controlled.…”