The present effort addressed both the issue of the generality of choice models and the issue of possible qualitative developmental change in temporal discounting by examining behavior at the individual level across the life span. Data from individual children, young adults, and older adults who participated in two previous studies were analyzed [Green, L., Fry, A.F., Myerson, J., 1994. Discount...

BACKGROUND Low income is related to food insecurity, and research has suggested that a scarcity of resources associated with low income can shift attention to the present, thereby discounting the future. OBJECTIVE We tested whether attending to the present and discounting the future may moderate the influence of income on food insecurity. DESIGN Delay discounting and measures of future time...

The tendency to make unhealthy choices is hypothesized to be related to an individual's temporal discount rate, the theoretical rate at which they devalue delayed rewards. Furthermore, a particular form of temporal discounting, hyperbolic discounting, has been proposed to explain why unhealthy behavior can occur despite healthy intentions. We examine these two hypotheses in turn. We first syste...

Discounting occurs when the value of an outcome changes because its delivery is delayed or uncertain. Discounting provides insight into how individuals make decisions, with rates of discounting being related to a number of behavioral disorders. In this study, 39 American Indians (AIs), 29 female, were recruited from the psychology department participant pool at a university in the Northern Plai...

Background Tobacco smoking harms health, so why do people smoke and fail to quit? An explanation originating in behavioural economics suggests a role for time-discounting, which describes how the value of a reward, such as better health, decreases with delay to its receipt. A large number of studies test the relationship of time-discounting with tobacco outcomes but the temporal pattern of this...

Intertemporal choice tasks, which pit smaller/sooner rewards against larger/later ones, are frequently used to study time preferences and, by extension, impulsivity and self-control. When used in animals, many trials are strung together in sequence and an adjusting buffer is added after the smaller/sooner option to hold the total duration of each trial constant. Choices of the smaller/sooner op...