title: Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later.
abstract: We examined the neural basis of self-regulation in individuals from a cohort of preschoolers who performed the delay-of-gratification task 4 decades ago. Nearly 60 individuals, now in their mid-forties, were tested on "hot" and "cool" versions of a go/nogo task to assess whether delay of gratification in childhood predicts impulse control abilities and sensitivity to alluring cues (happy faces). Individuals who were less able to delay gratification in preschool and consistently showed low self-control abilities in their twenties and thirties performed more poorly than did high delayers when having to suppress a response to a happy face but not to a neutral or fearful face. This finding suggests that sensitivity to environmental hot cues plays a significant role in individuals' ability to suppress actions toward such stimuli. A subset of these participants (n = 26) underwent functional imaging for the first time to test for biased recruitment of frontostriatal circuitry when required to suppress responses to alluring cues. Whereas the prefrontal cortex differentiated between nogo and go trials to a greater extent in high delayers, the ventral striatum showed exaggerated recruitment in low delayers. Thus, resistance to temptation as measured originally by the delay-of-gratification task is a relatively stable individual difference that predicts reliable biases in frontostriatal circuitries that integrate motivational and control processes.
authors.affiliation: Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY 10065, USA. bjc2002@med.cornell.edu
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Casey
authors.forename: Leah H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Somerville
authors.forename: Ian H
authors.initials: IH
authors.lastname: Gotlib
authors.forename: Ozlem
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ayduk
authors.forename: Nicholas T
authors.initials: NT
authors.lastname: Franklin
authors.forename: Mary K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Askren
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jonides
authors.forename: Marc G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Berman
authors.forename: Nicole L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.forename: Theresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Teslovich
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Glover
authors.forename: Vivian
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Zayas
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Mischel
authors.forename: Yuichi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shoda
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000502:physiology*; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*