Abstract
The goal of this study was to examine age effects on the ability/willingness to wait for large rewards in a real temporal reward discounting task from childhood to adulthood. Therefore, a real temporal discounting (TD) task was administered to children aged 6–12 (n = 39), adolescents aged 13–17 (n = 28), and young adults aged 18–19 (n = 55). Findings indicated that the cross-sectional development of TD followed a quadratic pattern across age groups, with adolescents choosing more often than children and adults to wait for the large delayed reward, resulting in reward-maximization. Various interpretations of this finding were offered, including a focus on reward maximization despite an immature ability to exert self-control, and flexible self-control which was high during this task as a result of strong motivation to maximize financial gains.
Highlights
Trading the anticipated benefits and costs of two choice options at different points in time is an important skill that we need to navigate through life: balancing the pursuit of future goals with enjoyment of the present moment, choosing between a high-fat dinner which you may enjoy and a perhaps less-preferred but healthier salad, deciding whether to save money for retirement or spending most of it
The ability/willingness to wait for a large reward has been viewed as a sign of self-control, and a relative preference for small immediate rewards is often considered an index of impulsivity (e.g., Critchfield and Kollins, 2001; Green and Myerson, 2004), we suggest that Temporal discounting (TD) may be better viewed as reflecting a trade-off between the ability to wait, and affective processes such as the sensitivity to the immediacy of the small reward and sensitivity to the magnitude of the delayed reward
This study had as a goal to examine whether age effects on temporal reward discounting (TD) with a real task with relatively small money amounts and short waiting times were linear or quadratic in a group of participants spanning childhood to emerging adulthood (6–19)
Summary
Trading the anticipated benefits and costs of two choice options at different points in time is an important skill that we need to navigate through life: balancing the pursuit of future goals with enjoyment of the present moment, choosing between a high-fat dinner which you may enjoy and a perhaps less-preferred but healthier salad, deciding whether to save money for retirement or spending most of it When this balancing of short-term smaller gains and long-term larger gains is measured in laboratory settings, this is typically done by the use of temporal reward discounting tasks. Strong preferences for small immediate rewards result in steep TD functions (small area under the curve), while strong preferences for large delayed rewards result in shallow TD functions (large area under the curve)
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