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The relationship between regular substance use and cost comparisons in stable and volatile learning contexts
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  • Published: 30 January 2026

The relationship between regular substance use and cost comparisons in stable and volatile learning contexts

  • Sonia G. Ruiz  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3681-946X1,
  • Samuel Paskewitz1 &
  • Arielle Baskin-Sommers  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6773-05081 

Translational Psychiatry , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Addiction
  • Human behaviour

Abstract

Insensitivity to costs during cost-benefit decision-making consistently has been related to substance use severity. However, little work has manipulated cost information to examine how people evaluate and compare multiple costs. Further, no work has examined how the consideration of cost information varies across different contexts. We administered a new loss-frame variant of a probabilistic learning task in a diverse community sample enriched for substance use (N = 137). Individuals with more years of regular substance use tended not to repeat choices after they avoided losses, choosing similarly regardless of whether they had avoided or incurred a loss. Computational modeling parameters indicated that they were more inconsistent in their use of expected values to guide choice. These results contribute to our conceptualization of substance use severity by suggesting that inconsistency in using cost information, rather than insensitivity to costs, may inform choices to continue using substances despite incurring negative consequences.

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Code availability

All data and code are available at https://osf.io/4e7nf/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Timothy Behrens for providing the original reward-variant probabilistic learning task program for adaptation. We also thank the students who helped collect these data: Mikayla Barber, Callie Benson-Williams, Jillian Jolly, Hannah Johns, Jordyn Ricard, and Aram Russell.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Sonia G. Ruiz, Samuel Paskewitz & Arielle Baskin-Sommers

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  1. Sonia G. Ruiz
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  2. Samuel Paskewitz
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Contributions

Conceptualization: SGR, ABS; Data Curation: SGR; Formal Analysis: SGR, SP, ABS; Funding Acquisition: ABS; Investigation: SGR, SP, ABS; Methodology: SGR, SP, ABS; Project Administration: SGR, ABS; Resources: ABS; Software: SGR; Supervision: SP, ABS; Visualization: SGR, SP, ABS; Writing – Original Draft Preparation: SGR, ABS; Writing – Review & Editing: SGR, SP, ABS.

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Correspondence to Sonia G. Ruiz.

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Ruiz, S.G., Paskewitz, S. & Baskin-Sommers, A. The relationship between regular substance use and cost comparisons in stable and volatile learning contexts. Transl Psychiatry (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-03830-z

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  • Received: 24 May 2025

  • Revised: 11 December 2025

  • Accepted: 20 January 2026

  • Published: 30 January 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-03830-z

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Translational Psychiatry (Transl Psychiatry)

ISSN 2158-3188 (online)

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