ArticleHealth psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association2021
Reinforcer pathology's alternative reinforcer hypothesis: A preliminary examination.
Article in Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Delay Discounting and the Income-Food Insecurity-Obesity Paradox in Mothers.Journal of obesity · 2023Trial
- Episodic Future Thinking as an Intervention for Alcohol Use Disorder: Effects on Delay Discounting and Real-World Alcohol Consumption.Research square · 2026Article
- Diagnostic validity of alcohol demand and monetary delay discounting in relation to alcohol use disorder.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2025Article
- The Phenotype of Recovery X: Associations between delay discounting, regulatory flexibility, and remission from substance use disorder.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2023Article
- The Effect of Financial Scarcity on Reinforcer Pathology: A Dyadic Developmental Examination.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Valuing the Diversity of Research Methods to Advance Nutrition Science.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Article
- Food reinforcement and habituation to food are processes related to initiation and cessation of eating.Physiology & behavior · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
objectiveThe novel theory of Reinforcer Pathology states that the temporal window of integration, measured by delay discounting (DD), determines the value of reinforcers. Based on the Reinforcer Pathology theory, the valuation of alternative reinforcers is positively associated with the length of the temporal window (negatively with rates of discounting). The objective of this article is to test the Reinforcer Pathology theory by reanalyzing data from a prior report (Carr & Epstein, 2018) in order to examine the association between the reinforcing value of alternative reinforcement and the length of the measured temporal window.
methodParticipants (
resultsDelay discounting was significantly positively correlated with sedentary reinforcement and significantly negatively correlated with cognitively enriching activities. A significant interaction was observed in the preference for between food and cognitive-enriching context as a function ln(k) in predicting the cognitive-enriching activity class. Nonsignificant relationships were also observed with the correlation of delay discounting to the reinforcement of social and physical activities.
conclusionsThese findings provide initial support for Reinforcer Pathology theory and indicate that the temporal window over which reinforcers are integrated may be a factor contributing to a preference for some healthy or unhealthy alternative reinforcers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.