中国科学院心理研究所机构知识库

Spatial discounting is a largely underexplored area of decision-making research, both theoretically and empirically, especially when compared to intertemporal choice, which has received significant attention in psychology and animal behaviour. Spatial decision problems seem to share some of the same features of a temporal decision problem (namely, the risk of reward objects disappearing and the opportunity cost of waiting), but there are several additional factors that affect the appropriate discount function for distant rewards. These include more significant opportunity costs, changes in the distances to all the other available opportunities, the post-reward costs of getting back home, the complex energetics associated with locomotion and all the additional risks faced by travelling itself. This paper organises and explores these factors and suggests some normative models that should predict the adaptive behaviour of animals and humans.

Helpful and extensive comments on earlier versions of the manuscript were provided by Charles Janson, Alasdair Houston, Gustavo Grandi and Jack Dance-Panas. Additional useful discussions were had with Shenghua Luan, Peter Todd, Xiaohong Cai and Kowshik Bettadapura.

This work was supported by funding for the job position from the Office of China Postdoc Council (OCPC) under the International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship Program and from the Institute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.