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 p2 =.08). Findings suggest the need for more research on exploratory decision impairments in youths with anxiety symptoms.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 979-989 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Clinical Psychological Science |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2021 |
Keywords
- anxiety
- computational modeling
- decision-making
- exploration
- irritability
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Psychology