Monetary Incentive Delay
Anticipate and respond to cues to win rewards; separates anticipation and target response.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What is MID?
A task probing reward anticipation and motivation using monetary incentives.
What happens in each MID trial?
A cue signals a potential gain, loss, or neutral outcome; after a short delay, a target appears and you must respond quickly enough to win the points or avoid losing points. Points are a score only — no real money is at stake.
Why does the chance of reward speed me up?
Anticipating incentive engages motivation and arousal systems. In neuroimaging versions, reward anticipation tracks activity in the striatum — the finding Knutson and colleagues built the task around.
What do my reaction times mean?
Faster responses on incentivized versus neutral trials index how strongly money mobilized you in this session — a state measure, not a trait verdict.
How is the target window set, and what about reward amounts?
Classic MID designs include several reward magnitudes. This version uses a single magnitude (+5 / −5) plus an individually calibrated target window: a short practice staircase widens or narrows the window to target roughly a 66% hit rate for your own response speed, and practice trials are excluded from your statistics. Interpret your results as reaction-time and hit-rate comparisons across reward, punishment, and neutral conditions — not as a measure of reward-magnitude sensitivity.
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References
- Knutson, B., Westdorp, A., Kaiser, E., & Hommer, D. (2000). FMRI visualization of brain activity during a monetary incentive delay task. NeuroImage, 12(1), 20-27. 10.1006/nimg.2000.0593
- Knutson, B., Adams, C. M., Fong, G. W., & Hommer, D. (2001). Anticipation of increasing monetary reward selectively recruits nucleus accumbens. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(16), RC159.
- Knutson, B., & Greer, S. M. (2008). Anticipatory affect: Neural correlates and consequences for choice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1511), 3771-3786. 10.1098/rstb.2008.0155
About This Experiment
This experiment is an educational adaptation for demonstration purposes. It is not a clinical diagnostic tool. Results reflect your performance in this specific session and should not be interpreted as an assessment of your cognitive abilities.
Data Privacy
Your experiment data is processed and stored locally in your browser. No data is uploaded to any server unless you explicitly export it.
