(Non-) impact of task experience on behavioral economic decision-making

Abstract

Behavioral economic research has been widely conducted via crowdsourcing resources to evaluate novel task designs or pilot interventions. One under recognized and yet-to-be tested concern is the impact of non-naïvety (i.e., prior task exposure) on behavioral economic task performance. We evaluated the influence of non-naïvety on task performance in two popular areas of behavioral economic research: behavioral economic demand and delay discounting. Participants (N = 485) recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk) completed alcohol and soda purchase tasks and delay discounting tasks for monetary and alcohol outcomes. Equivalence of responding and effect sizes with clinical variables were compared based on prior task experience. Over one quarter of participants reported demand task experience (26.9%) and nearly half endorsed delay discounting task experience (48.6%). Statistically equivalent responding was observed for alcohol purchase task data with less-than-small effect size differences based on task experience (d = 0.01-0.13). Similar results were observed for a soda purchase task thereby supporting generalization to a non-alcohol commodity. Measures of convergent and discriminant validity for behavioral economic demand indicated medium-to-large and stimulus-specific effect sizes with little variation based on prior task exposure. Delay discounting for money and alcohol showed some sensitivity to prior task experience (i.e., less steep discounting for non-naïve participants), however these effects were attenuated after accounting for group differences in alcohol use. These findings support the fidelity of behavioral economic task outcomes and emphasize that participant non-naïvety in crowdsourcing settings may minimally impact performance on behavioral economic assays commonly used in behavioral and addiction science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Figure 1.. Alcohol and Soda Purchase Task Demand Curves.

Plotted are demand curves for mean participant data for the alcohol (top panel) and soda (bottom panel) purchase tasks. Plots are presented based on previous task exposure. Errors bars are 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 2.. Distributions of Alcohol Purchase Task Variables.

Plotted are individual participant data and median values for alcohol demand variables as a function of previous task exposure.

Figure 3.. Distributions of Soda Purchase Task Variables.

Plotted are individual participant data and median values for soda demand variables as a function of previous task exposure.

Figure 4.. Equivalence Testing for Behavioral Economic Demand.

Plotted are the effect sizes (d) for the difference between participants with and without prior purchase task exposure for each measure. Surrounding each estimate is the 90% confidence interval. The thin dotted line demarcates zero or equal value while the dashed lines demarcate a small effect sizes (d = 0.20).

Figure 5.. Distributions and Equivalence Tests of Delay Discounting Variables.

Plotted are individual participant data and median values for the rates of monetary delay discounting (top panel) and alcohol delay discounting (middle panel) as a function of previous task exposure. Also shown are equivalence plots for these variables (bottom panel) indicating the effect size (d) for the difference between participants with and without prior delay discounting task exposure for each commodity. Surrounding each estimate is the 90% confidence interval. The thin dotted line demarcates zero or equal value while the dashed lines demarcate a small effect sizes (d = 0.20).