Are We There Yet? Diminishing Sensitivity to Future Time Horizons Predicts Children’s Discounting of Delayed Rewards

• In Event: 3-099 - Children’s Representation of Time in Memory and Future-Oriented Thought

Integrative Statement

It is natural to think that individual differences in how far away the future feels might have important implications for future oriented behaviour. Moreover, given the difficulties that children have with making accurate (past) duration estimates (Block, Zakay & Hancock, 1999; McCormack, 2015) along with their difficulty in waiting for future rewards (Mischel, 2014) we might expect them to experience future time points as being particularly far away relative to adults and adolescents. However, despite the intuitive appeal of such hypotheses, we know little if anything regarding children’s future time horizons, either in purely descriptive terms or with regard to individual differences in the relation of subjective time to other aspects of future oriented behaviour. Bringing these issues into sharper focus is recent work with adults that suggests that subjective time horizons play a key role in explaining the particular way in which future rewards are discounted (Kim & Zauberman, 2009; 2013).

In the present study, we devised a novel task to measure children’s subjective time horizons. We asked 7-to-11-year-olds (N = 132) to think about a number of future time points ranging from 1 day to 3 months and to pull a string from a dispenser to indicate how far away each time point felt. We then mapped these subjective time estimates to objective time and fitted both linear and power functions. In addition, children completed a delay of gratification task, a hypothetical delay discounting task and measures of verbal and spatial IQ. We predicted that, similar to adults, children would show diminishing sensitivity to increases in future time horizons and that individual differences in children’s sensitivity to future time would predict temporal discounting and delay of gratification.

Our results revealed that the relation between children’s subjective time horizons and objective time was best described by a power function rather than a linear function, consistent with a diminishing sensitivity to time (see Figure 1). Furthermore, individual differences in the sensitivity to future time predicted children’s discounting of hypothetical future rewards (though not their delay of gratification) after controlling for age and IQ. Consistent with a large body of work across both adult and comparative literatures, discount functions calculated across objective time were best described by a hyperbolic equation (steep discount rates over short time delays and shallow discounting over longer delays) rather than an exponential equation (steady discount rates across time). However, when children’s discount functions were calculated across subjective time the reverse pattern was true.

These results suggest that children’s perception of future time influences their discounting of future rewards. Larger departures from a linear perception of future time are associated with steeper discounting of delayed rewards.

Authors

• Teresa McCormack, Queen's University Belfast
  Presenting Author

• Patrick Burns, Queen's University Belfast
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patrick A. O'Connor, Queen's University Belfast
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cristina M. Atance, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author