Abstract
AbstractDiscounting the value of delayed rewards has primarily been measured in children with the delay of gratification task and in adolescents and adults with the delay discounting task. In the present study, we assessed the suitability of the delay discounting task as a measure of temporal discounting in children. A sample of 7‐ to 9‐year‐olds (N = 98) completed a delay discounting task, a delay of gratification task, a sensation seeking measure, and IQ measures. In addition, teacher‐based assessments of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder traits were measured. The results indicated that the majority of children produced meaningful data on the discounting task and discounted rewards hyperbolically. Children with an elevated risk of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder showed a trend towards discounting future rewards on the delay discounting task more steeply than did those at low risk. However, delay discounting was unrelated to either delay of gratification or sensation seeking. We interpret these results as providing some support for the use of delay discounting as a measure of intertemporal choice in children, although the results also suggest that delay discounting and delay of gratification tasks may tap different processes in this population.
Highlights
People often face difficult choices in which the receipt of a long‐term reward requires the forgoing of an immediate reward; examples are deciding how much to save for retirement or whether to adhere to a diet when dining out
We interpret these results as providing some support for the use of delay discounting as a measure of intertemporal choice in children, the results suggest that delay discounting and delay of gratification tasks may tap different processes in this population
We examined the nature of the data obtained using the DD task from a sample of 7‐ to 9‐year‐ olds; we looked at the relations between children's performance on a DD task and their performance on a DoG choice task (Mischel & Metzner, 1962), as well as further measures of sensation seeking and attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits
Summary
People often face difficult choices in which the receipt of a long‐term reward requires the forgoing of an immediate reward; examples are deciding how much to save for retirement or whether to adhere to a diet when dining out. Decision making on intertemporal choice tasks has been proposed as a general behavioral marker for long‐term health and well‐being (Bickel, Koffarnus, Moody, & Wilson, 2014). For this reason, the kind of future‐oriented self‐control that underwrites prudent intertemporal choices has typically been characterized as an important ability for children to develop and one that has been associated with other indices of social and cognitive development (Casey et al, 2011; Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989; Moffitt et al, 2010)
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