Deliberative Choice Strategies in Youths: Relevance to Transdiagnostic Anxiety Symptoms. (September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cardinale, Elise M.; Pagliaccio, David; Swetlitz, Caroline; Grassie, Hannah; Abend, Rany; Costa, Vincent; Averbeck, Bruno; Brotman, Melissa A.; Pine, Daniel S.; Leibenluft, Ellen; Kircanski, Katharina
• Is Part Of: Clinical psychological science. Volume 9:Number 5(2021)
• Page Start: 979
• Page End: 989
• Publication Date: 2021-09
• Subjects: decision-making -- computational modeling -- exploration -- anxiety -- irritability; Clinical psychology -- Periodicals; 616.89
• DOI: 10.1177/2167702621991805
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2167-7026

Abstract

Aberrant decision-making characterizes various pediatric psychopathologies; however, deliberative choice strategies have not been investigated. A transdiagnostic sample of 95 youths completed a child-friendly sequential sampling paradigm. Participants searched for the best offer by sampling a finite list of offers. Participants' willingness to explore was measured as the number of offers sampled, and ideal task performance was modeled using a Markov decision-process model. As in previous findings in adults, youths explored more offers when lists were long compared with short, yet participants generally sampled fewer offers relative to model-estimated ideal performance. Searching deeper into the list was associated with choosing better price options. Analyses examining the main and interactive effects of transdiagnostic anxiety and irritability symptoms indicated a negative correlation between anxiety and task performance ( p = .01, η p 2 = .08). Findings suggest the need for more research on exploratory decision impairments in youths with anxiety symptoms.