Episodic future thinking and delay of gratification in children: An individual differences study

Abstract

Unlike studies with adolescents and adults, studies with children have yet to uncover a link between episodic future thinking (EFT) and delay of gratification (DoG) and EFT cueing has not been shown to enhance children’s DoG. Understanding developmental patterns requires better understanding of the processes underlying children’s DoG performance. This study examined whether individual differences predicted 8–11-year-olds’ (53% M) performance on two separate DoG tasks, each with or without EFT cueing: a delay choice task with real rewards and a delay discounting task with hypothetical monetary rewards. It also examined whether these measures predicted children’s ability to benefit from EFT cueing. The children were from Ireland, primarily White, and ranged from marginally below average to above average SES. In analyses controlling for age and general verbal ability, none of our variables predicted the difference in performance between the uncued and EFT-cued versions of either task. Positive contemplation emotion, reflecting the extent to which a child takes pleasure from anticipating positive future events, was the sole significant predictor of performance on a delay choice task with EFT cues, controlling for age and verbal ability. For the delay discounting task, EFT ability, working memory and a more proactive attentional control style were all significant predictors of performance on an EFT-cued version of the task, but not on an uncued version. Engaging in EFT cueing seems to be effortful for children, and greater cognitive resources may be needed to buffer against the cognitive load associated with future thinking cues in delay discounting tasks.