title: Learning to wait for more likely or just more: greater tolerance to delays of reward with increasingly longer delays.
abstract: Little research has focused on training greater tolerance to delays of rewards in the context of delayed gratification. In delayed gratification, waiting for a delayed outcome necessitates the ability to resist defection for a continuously available smaller, immediate outcome. The present research explored the use of a fading procedure for producing greater waiting in a video-game based, delayed gratification task. Participants were assigned to conditions in which either the reward magnitude, or the probability of receiving a reward, was a function of time waited and the delay to the maximum reward was gradually increased throughout this training. Waiting increased for all participants but less for those waiting for a greater reward magnitude than a greater reward probability. All participants showed a tendency to wait in a final testing phase, but training with probabilistic outcomes produced a significantly greater likelihood of waiting during testing. The behavioral requirements of delay discounting versus delay gratification are discussed, as well as the benefits of training greater self-control in a variety of contexts.
authors: Utah State University.
authors: Jillian M
authors: JM
authors: Rung
authors: Michael E
authors: ME
authors: Young
mesh_terms: D065786:Delay Discounting; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012201:Reward; D013997:Time Factors; D018910:Video Games
keywords: delay discounting; delay tolerance; delayed gratification; human; impulsivity; self-control; training
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