Reinforcer Pathology’s Alternative Reinforcer Hypothesis:A Preliminary Examination

Background and objective: The novel theory of Reinforcer Pathology states that the temporal window of integration, measured by delay discounting (DD), determines the value of reinforcers. Based on theReinforcer Pathology theory, the valuation of alternative reinforcers is positively associated with thelength of the temporal window (negatively with rates of discounting). The objective of this article is totest the Reinforcer Pathology theory by reanalyzing data from a prior report (Carr & Epstein, 2018) inorder to examine the association between the reinforcing value of alternative reinforcement and thelength of the measured temporal window. Method: Participants (N = 250) who completed an adjustingdelay discounting task and the Pleasant Events Schedule (PES) were included in the study. PES providesa measurement of a reinforcement score (a cross-product of PES measures of frequency and pleasantness)for 45 noneating alternative activities. Analysis of Variance and Spearman product-moment correlationswere completed. Results: Delay discounting was significantly positively correlated with sedentaryreinforcement and significantly negatively correlated with cognitively enriching activities. A significantinteraction was observed in the preference for between food and cognitive-enriching context as a functionln(k) in predicting the cognitive-enriching activity class. Nonsignificant relationships were also observedwith the correlation of delay discounting to the reinforcement of social and physical activities.