Page 242 - Like me, or else... - Michelle Achterberg

Chapter 8
structure is an important underlying mechanism for predicting change in behavior, whereas a reversed claim (i.e., behavior being a predictor for brain change) cannot be made based on the current study. Taken together, change in delay of gratification is partly driven by a more mature white matter connectivity path between striatum and PFC.
It has to be noted that our results are based on a hypothetical delay- discounting task. According to the economic literature not actually paying the participant for the choices on the delay discounting task could possibly undermine the participants behavior in how seriously they take the choices. Although our earlier reported results of hypothetical discounting in adults (Peper et al., 2013) were consistent with results of real discounting in adults (van den Bos et al., 2014) and several studies have shown that choices on hypothetical- and real tasks significantly correlate in adults (Bickel et al., 2009; Scheres et al., 2010), it might be possible that specifically adolescents are influenced by the hypothetical aspect of our task. However, a recent study with a real-discounting task in a larger age range (8-25; van den Bos et al. (2015)) revealed similar modulating relations between structural connectivity and delay discounting, suggesting that the use of a hypothetical task might not influence the findings significantly.
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