Influence Of Central Executive Function On Delay Discounting

When making decisions or choices involving known outcomes, people typically weight the value of an outcome by the time it takes to obtain the outcome. The value of a desirable or undesirable consequense will typically decrease as the consequence becomes more remote in time. So reward or punishment that is avaiable immediately has more impact on performance than reward or punishment that is delayed. This aspect of decision making is referred to as delay discounting. Delay discounting rate is an index of impulsiveness of individual.Central executive function is one of the components in the working memory model, which plays an important role in many higher cognitive performances. It contains switching attention,updating memory,selection and inhibition. The aim of the study is to identify the roles of CEF in delay discounting task and the relationship between CEF and impulsiveness. The results indicated that the CEF has impact on discounting rate and impulsiveness. The prearrangement study showed that in delay discounting task Chinese also fit with the hyperbolic discounting line like foreigners.The conclusions of the first and second studies including: inhibiting , switching attention, updating and selecting can influence the discounting rate when the workload of CEF under different conditions. Further , a strong direct relation was found between measures of impulsiveness, central executive function, and discounting of delayed rewards. Thus ,limits on CEF, either intrinsic or extrinsic, are predictive of a more impulsive decision-making style.