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Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls

Addiction to the Internet has emerged as a new kind of addictive behavior. Although previous studies have revealed that impairments in working memory led to suboptimal decision making (e.g., a greater willingness to choose smaller, more immediate rewards), little is known about how working memory af...

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Autor principal: Li, Hongxia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718445/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975606
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675059
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author Li, Hongxia
author_facet Li, Hongxia
author_sort Li, Hongxia
collection PubMed
description Addiction to the Internet has emerged as a new kind of addictive behavior. Although previous studies have revealed that impairments in working memory led to suboptimal decision making (e.g., a greater willingness to choose smaller, more immediate rewards), little is known about how working memory affects intertemporal choice in Internet addicts and normal users. Thus, this study’s aim was to investigate the effect of working memory task on intertemporal choice in 33 participants addicted to internet and 25 healthy controls. Participants were administered (a) a test for Internet Addiction, (b) a single delay discounting self-report questionnaire (c) a working memory task. Differences between the Internet addicts and the control group were observed in terms of delay discounting rates, reaction times, and in memory accuracy rates. We observed significantly higher delay discounting rates among individuals addicted to the Internet. Moreover, it was documented that reaction times follow the 4-level working memory condition were significantly longer than follow the 2-level condition, in both the Internet addicts and the control group. The current findings suggest that Internet addicts are more likely to make short-sighted decisions than normal Internet users. The higher the level of working memory, the more likely an individual is to choose the present smaller reward, thus making short-sighted decisions, and have longer response times.
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spelling pubmed-87184452022-01-01 Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls Li, Hongxia Front Psychol Psychology Addiction to the Internet has emerged as a new kind of addictive behavior. Although previous studies have revealed that impairments in working memory led to suboptimal decision making (e.g., a greater willingness to choose smaller, more immediate rewards), little is known about how working memory affects intertemporal choice in Internet addicts and normal users. Thus, this study’s aim was to investigate the effect of working memory task on intertemporal choice in 33 participants addicted to internet and 25 healthy controls. Participants were administered (a) a test for Internet Addiction, (b) a single delay discounting self-report questionnaire (c) a working memory task. Differences between the Internet addicts and the control group were observed in terms of delay discounting rates, reaction times, and in memory accuracy rates. We observed significantly higher delay discounting rates among individuals addicted to the Internet. Moreover, it was documented that reaction times follow the 4-level working memory condition were significantly longer than follow the 2-level condition, in both the Internet addicts and the control group. The current findings suggest that Internet addicts are more likely to make short-sighted decisions than normal Internet users. The higher the level of working memory, the more likely an individual is to choose the present smaller reward, thus making short-sighted decisions, and have longer response times. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8718445/ /pubmed/34975606 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675059 Text en Copyright © 2021 Li. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Li, Hongxia
Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls
title Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls
title_full Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls
title_fullStr Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls
title_full_unstemmed Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls
title_short Working Memory Depletion Affects Intertemporal Choice Among Internet Addicts and Healthy Controls
title_sort working memory depletion affects intertemporal choice among internet addicts and healthy controls
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718445/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975606
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675059
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