Examining children's ability to delay reward: Is the delay discounting task a suitable measure?

Reward-related episodic future thinking and delayed gratification in children

Cuing adults to imagine their personal futures enhances prudent choice in delay discounting tasks. However, it has not been established that such cueing also reduces discounting in children. We assessed the effect of episodic future thinking (EFT) on delay of gratification in children using EFT cues specifically related to the rewards on offer. One hundred and thirty-nine 8-12-year-olds were assigned to one of three conditions: (i) EFT (imagine spending money in the future), (ii) Imagine Place (imagine being in a certain place), or (iii) No Cue. They were cued on each trial of two tasks: a delay discounting task with hypothetical monetary rewards and a real delay choice task involving choices between real rewards over real delays (coins that could be swapped for treats). In the delay discounting task, the Imagine Place group showed significantly higher discounting than the other two groups. In the real delay choice task, the Imagine Place group made significantly fewer delayed choices than the EFT group. However, the EFT group did not differ from the No Cue group in either task. The lack of a difference between the EFT and No Cue conditions supports previous findings suggesting children struggle to benefit from EFT cues. Poorer performance of the Imagine Place group suggests that cued imagination is cognitively taxing for children, using up cognitive resources required to delay gratification.

Developmental trajectories of delay discounting from childhood to young adulthood: longitudinal associations and test-retest reliability

Delay discounting (DD) indexes an individual's preference for smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards, and is considered a form of cognitive impulsivity. Cross-sectional studies have demonstrated that DD peaks in adolescence; longitudinal studies are needed to validate this putative developmental trend, and to determine whether DD assesses a temporary state, or reflects a more stable behavioral trait. In this study, 140 individuals aged 9-23 completed a delay discounting (DD) task and cognitive battery at baseline and every-two years thereafter, yielding five assessments over approximately 10 years. Models fit with the inverse effect of age best approximated the longitudinal trajectory of two DD measures, hyperbolic discounting (log[k]) and area under the indifference-point curve (AUC). Discounting of future rewards increased rapidly from childhood to adolescence and appeared to plateau in late adolescence for both models of DD. Participants with greater verbal intelligence and working memory displayed reduced DD across the duration of the study, suggesting a functional interrelationship between these domains and DD from early adolescence to adulthood. Furthermore, AUC demonstrated good to excellent reliability across assessment points that was superior to log(k), with both measures demonstrating acceptable stability once participants reached late adolescence. The developmental trajectories of DD we observed from childhood through young adulthood suggest that DD may index cognitive control more than reward sensitivity, and that despite modest developmental changes with maturation, AUC may be conceptualized as a trait variable related to cognitive control vs impulsivity.

Economic and social deprivation predicts impulsive choice in children

Impulsivity is an individual difference in decision-making that is a risk factor for a number of health concerns including addiction and obesity. Although impulsivity has a large heritable component, the health concerns associated with impulsivity are not uniformly distributed across society. For example, people from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be overweight, and be dependent on tobacco or alcohol. This suggests that the environmental component of impulsivity might be related to economic circumstances and the availability of resources. This paper provides evidence that children aged 4 to 12 from the most deprived areas in England show greater impulsivity in the form of delay discounting than do children from the least deprived areas. The data are discussed with reference to scarcity-based models of decision-making and to public health inequalities.

Computational and Motivational Mechanisms of Human Social Decision Making Involving Close Others

Every day, human beings make decisions with social consequences. These social consequences matter most when they impact those closest to us. Recent research has shown that humans exhibit reliable preferences when deciding between conflicting outcomes involving close others - for example, prioritizing the interests of one's family member over one's friend. However, virtually nothing is known about the mechanisms that drive these preferences. We conducted a pre-registered study in a large (maximum N=375) sample to quantify the computational and motivational mechanisms of human social decision-making preferences involving close others. By pairing assessment techniques from behavioral economics and psychological science with computational modeling and random coefficient regression, we show that value-based cognitive computations (e.g., risk and loss aversion) drive social decision-making preferences involving financial outcomes, whereas socioemotional motivations (e.g., relationship quality) underlie preferences involving social outcomes. These results imply mechanistic heterogeneity, underscoring a need for greater attention to contextual specificity in social decision-making.

More Later: Delay of Gratification and Thought About the Future in Children

We investigated whether individual differences in future time perception and the detail with which future events are imagined are related to children's delay of gratification. We administered a delay choice task (real rewards), a delay discounting task (hypothetical rewards), a novel future time perception measure, an episodic future thinking (EFT) interview and IQ measures to a sample of 7- to 11-year-olds (N = 132) drawn from a urban predominately white population in N. Ireland. We found a strong correlation between delay choice and delay discounting. Future time perception and EFT were related to delay discounting, however only the relation with future time perception survived controlling for age and IQ. Children who showed greater compression of future time periods were the steepest discounters.

Working memory and decision making in children with ADHD: an analysis of delay discounting with the use of the dual-task paradigm

BACKGROUND

Deficits in working memory tasks have been widely documented in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) studies. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of working memory load in impulsivity during decision-making processes. A delayed discounting (DD) paradigm was used, comparing children with ADHD and age-matched controls.

METHOD

Thirty-two children equally divided between typically developing and ADHD, from 8 to 10 years of age were assigned to sessions of a dual-task paradigm. In the primary task the child has to choose between two different amounts of money at different time delays, while in the secondary task the child has to repeat a random series of digits with different lengths. The experiment was conducted in a school setting.

RESULTS

Compared to peers with typical development, delayed discounting was significantly stronger in children with ADHD and discounting rates increased in both groups for heavier memory loads. Furthermore, the memory load impact on frequency of immediate rewards was stronger in children with ADHD compared to typically developing children.

DISCUSSION

Results are discussed in terms of the relation between working memory load and decision-making processes, their impact on impulsive behaviour in ADHD and the need for future research to understand possible neurocognitive correlates and use that information to develop better inclusive policies.