Validation of the Sexual Discounting Task for Use in Adolescents.

The Sexual Discounting Task (SDT) was developed to evaluate the effects of delay on decision making as it relates to sexual risk-taking behaviors. Though previously validated with other populations, including urban emerging adults, the current study sought to validate the SDT with adolescents. A sample of adolescents (N = 155; 61% female) between ages 14 and 21 (Mage = 19.5 years) was recruited to complete the SDT (involving choices between immediate unprotected sex and delayed sex with a condom with hypothetical sexual partners) and the Delay Discounting Task (a delay discounting task for money outcomes). Additionally, they completed several self-report measures assessing demographics, sexual behavior, and sexual history. If the condom was readily available, respondents were more likely to use a condom for partners who were judged "most likely to have an STI" and for those that participants were "least likely to have sex with." Moreover, when a condom was not immediately available, greater self-reported sexual risk-taking was related to greater sexual discounting (i.e., greater effects of delay on decreasing condom use). Furthermore, sexual discounting was greater among partners deemed more desirable and those judged "least likely to have an STI." Differences in sexual discounting were significant after controlling for immediately available condom use. Findings from the current study suggest that the SDT is clinically meaningful for adolescents and is sensitive to factors that influence real-world decisions to use condoms. Future treatment and prevention should consider delay discounting as an important variable affecting sexual risk behavior.

R2 should not be used to describe behavioral-economic discounting and demand models.

Literature concerning operant behavioral economics shows a strong preference for the coefficient of determination (R2) metric to (a) describe how well an applied model accounts for variance and (b) depict the quality of collected data. Yet R2 is incompatible with nonlinear modeling. In this report, we provide an updated discussion of the concerns with R2. We first review recent articles that have been published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior that employ nonlinear models, noting recent trends in goodness-of-fit reporting, including the continued reliance on R2. We then examine the tendency for these metrics to bias against linear-like patterns via a positive correlation between goodness of fit and the primary outputs of behavioral-economic modeling. Mathematically, R2 is systematically more stringent for lower values for discounting parameters (e.g., k) in discounting studies and lower values for the elasticity parameter (α) in demand analysis. The study results suggest there may be heterogeneity in how this bias emerges in data sets of varied composition and origin. There are limitations when using any goodness-of-fit measure to assess the systematic nature of data in behavioral-economic studies, and to address those we recommend the use of algorithms that test fundamental expectations of the data.

Psychedelic Identity Shift: A Critical Approach to Set And Setting.

While the literature on psychedelic medicine emphasizes the importance of set and setting alongside the quality of subjective drug effects for therapeutic efficacy, few scholars have explored the therapeutic frameworks that are used alongside psychedelics in the lab or in the clinic. Based on a narrative analysis of the treatment manual and post-session experience reports from a pilot study of psilocybin-assisted treatment for tobacco smoking cessation, this article examines how therapeutic frameworks interact with the psychedelic substance in ways that can rapidly reshape participants' identity and sense of self. We identified multiple domains relating to identity shift that appear to serve as smoking cessation mechanisms during psilocybin sessions, each of which had an identifiable presence in the manualized treatment. As psychedelic medicine becomes mainstream, consensual and evidence-based approaches to psychedelic-assisted identity shift that respect patient autonomy and encourage empowerment should become areas of focus in the emergent field of psychedelic bioethics.