Does the ability to wait for rewards change across the lifespan?
Middle-aged adults discounted future money the least, children and the oldest adults the most, and at every age people who were more future-oriented were better at waiting for bigger rewards.
Source
Delay of Gratification, Delay Discounting and their Associations with Age, Episodic Future Thinking, and Future Time Perspective
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Five age groups tested once on a board-game delay-of-gratification test, the Kirby delay-discounting questionnaire, an imagination (episodic future thinking) task and a time-perspective scale; group comparisons, quadratic regressions and rank correlations
- N
- N=96 · 96 participants split across five age groups (9-14, 18-25, 35-55, 65-80, 80+), so each group is small; some analyses have 92-95 cases
- Population
- Children, adolescents and adults aged 9 to 101 from the Zurich and Lucerne regions of Switzerland, screened for cognitive impairment and depression
- Outcome
- Delay of gratification (DoG-A composite), delay discounting rate k, episodic future thinking 'experience index', and future/past time perspective (Balanced Time Perspective Scale)
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What they did
The researchers tested 96 people aged 9 to 101 in five age groups. Delay of gratification was measured with a board game in which players repeatedly chose between a small reward now and a bigger one later, using snacks, hypothetical money, real money and magazines. Delay discounting was measured with a 27-item questionnaire of hypothetical money choices. Participants also imagined and described future and non-time-specific scenes (episodic future thinking) and filled in a scale measuring how much they think positively about the future and the past.
What they found
Delay discounting differed by age and followed a U-shape, lowest (most patient) in young and middle-aged adults and highest in children and the oldest adults; only the middle-aged versus 80+ comparison was significant after correction. The behavioural delay-of-gratification score showed only a non-significant trend with age. Both waiting measures were related to each other and to future time perspective, but not to past time perspective or to how vividly people imagined future events. Future orientation declined with age while past orientation rose, and 'futurists' (high future, low past orientation) were the best at delaying gratification.
The limits
What it doesn't show
With 96 people spread over five age groups, each group was small, so the study had limited power to detect age differences in the behavioural waiting task. Because it compares different people of different ages at one time, age differences could reflect generation, education or income (which rose with age in this sample) rather than ageing itself. The youngest children were 9 or older, so the study says nothing about the preschool years where most delay-of-gratification research is done. The quadratic and linear age models did not differ significantly in fit, and most variables were non-normal, forcing non-parametric tests.
Key terms
- Delay of gratification
- Behaviourally choosing to wait for a larger reward instead of taking a smaller one immediately, as in the marshmallow test.
- Delay discounting
- The tendency for a reward to feel less valuable the longer you must wait for it; a higher discount rate k means more impulsive choices.
- Episodic future thinking
- The ability to mentally project yourself into the future and vividly imagine a specific event.
- Future time perspective
- A relatively stable tendency to think about and plan for the future, measured here by questionnaire.
- Hot and cool systems
- A model of self-control in which an emotional, reward-driven 'hot' system competes with a calm, cognitive 'cool' system.
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Quiz yourself
Which pattern best describes delay discounting across the five age groups?
Common questions
Why did delay discounting show age differences when the waiting game did not?
The authors suggest the questionnaire, with its hypothetical sums and varying delays, draws on 'cool' cognitive processing that declines in old age, whereas the game with real snacks and money taps motivational 'hot' processes that stay more stable. Small groups also limited power.
Why were the children in this study so good at waiting?
They averaged about 11 years old, much older than the preschoolers typically tested, and the ability to delay gratification improves through childhood.
Did imagining the future vividly make people more patient?
Not here. Episodic future thinking was unrelated to both waiting measures, possibly because the task order was randomized so the imagination task often did not come directly before the choices.
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