Nikki C. Lee, Renate H. M. de Groot, Annemarie Boschloo, Sanne Dekker, Lydia Krabbendam, Jelle Jolles
Abstract
This study examined age-related changes in a specific aspect of adolescent decision-making, namely the preference for future versus immediate outcomes. A sample of 622 Dutch adolescents aged 12-17 years completed a temporal discounting task. Participants were asked to choose between a delayed reward of €50 or an immediate reward of lower value. The delay interval was varied in three blocks (1 week, 1 month, 6 months). Results showed that preferences for large delayed rewards over smaller immediate rewards increased with age: late adolescents made more long-term decisions than early adolescents. This change was related to educational track. In the lower educational track, an age-related decrease in discounting was found for all three delay intervals. In the higher educational track this decrease only occurred for the 6 month delay interval. However, across all delay intervals enrolment in a higher level educational track was associated with an increased preference for long-term rewards. These results suggest that late adolescents are less susceptible than early adolescents to the competing presence of an immediate reward when making long-term decisions, a skill which becomes increasingly important as they transition into adulthood.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 March 2014.
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#17,708,224
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Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#20,276
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#756
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