Rational inattention as a transdiagnostic marker of mental disorders

Abstract People tend to choose immediate payouts over larger payouts to be made in the future. This is called temporal discounting. Substantial research has indicated that steeper temporal discounting is associated with reduced self-control and various mental disorders, making it a plausible transdiagnostic marker of mental disorders. Recently, a novel theoretical framework and accompanying computational model has called into question the interpretation of temporal discounting as lack of self-control. Instead, this new framework suggests that temporal discounting is a function of uncertainty in cognitive representations of the future. This is an important distinction with regard to temporal discounting’s transdiagnostic standing because it means that reduced allocation of cognitive resources to representing future reward (rational inattention) is the transdiagnostic marker of mental disorders and not solely a lack of self-control. To test this possibility, here we compare the model of rational inattention to the classical hyperbolic model of intertemporal choice. We additionally evaluate the ability of rational inattention to predict a suite of psychopathological symptoms. We find that rational inattention does capture intertemporal choice better than the traditional model and that it correlates with dimensions of psychopathology. This work can inform cognitive-behavioral interventions of various mental disorders, as well as guide future research on intertemporal decision-making.