Journal article

Positive temporal dependence of the biological clock implies hyperbolic discounting

Debajyoti Ray, Peter Bossaerts

FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE | FRONTIERS RESEARCH FOUNDATION | Published : 2011

Abstract

Temporal preferences of animals and humans often exhibit inconsistencies, whereby an earlier, smaller reward may be preferred when it occurs immediately but not when it is delayed. Such choices reflect hyperbolic discounting of future rewards, rather than the exponential discounting required for temporal consistency. Simultaneously, however, evidence has emerged that suggests that animals and humans have an internal representation of time that often differs from the calendar time used in detection of temporal inconsistencies. Here, we prove that temporal inconsistencies emerge if fixed durations in calendar time are experienced as positively related (positive quadrant dependent). Hence, what..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by U.S. National Science Foundation


Funding Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Peter Dayan for useful comments and for pointing out a mistake in the previous version of our proof, and to the reviewers for their insightful comments. The U.S. National Science Foundation provided funding under grant SES-0616431.