Delay of gratification as a function of exchange values and appetitive values of the rewards

This study examined the manner in which the probability of delaying gratification is affected by the exchange values and the appetitive values of the rewards offered. Several delay-of-gratification questions were used, requiring a choice between an early small reward and a reward twice as great due at a later time. A total of 6,799 fourth- and sixth-grade Israeli public school pupils participated in the study. Results consistent across sexes, grades, and two delay conditions (now versus in a week from now and in a week versus in a month) indicated that the tendency to delay gratification is directly related to the exchange values of the rewards offered but inversely related to their appetitive values. Several implications of these results for the Value X Expectancy model of delay behavior were discussed.The present report is based on data collected as part of a nationwide study on educational achievement in public schools in Israel supported by the Van Leer Foundation (Holland) and the Ministry of Education of Israel.     

Delayed gratification in New Caledonian crows and young children: influence of reward type and visibility

Animal Cognition - Self-control underlies cognitive abilities such as decision making and future planning. Delay of gratification is a measure of self-control and involves obtaining a more valuable...     

The influence of maternal child-rearing attitudes and teaching behaviors on preschoolers' delay of gratification

This study was an exploratory examination of the influence of mothers' teaching behaviors, strategies, and child-rearing attitudes on their children's ability to delay gratification. In an externally imposed delay of gratification situation, 30 mothers from a rural university community taught their children strategies that could help them refrain from touching a brightly wrapped present when the mothers left the room. Results showed that mothers of children who did not delay gratification exhibited teaching behaviors and child-rearing attitudes consistent with a permissive parenting style, whereas mothers of children who did delay gratification exhibited teaching behaviors and child-rearing attitudes consistent with an authoritative parenting style. The results of this study are discussed with respect to the development of children's self-control and self-regulatory abilities.     

The influence of delaying judgments of learning on metacognitive accuracy: a meta-analytic review

Many studies have examined the accuracy of predictions of future memory performance solicited through judgments of learning (JOLs). Among the most robust findings in this literature is that delaying predictions serves to substantially increase the relative accuracy of JOLs compared with soliciting JOLs immediately after study, a finding termed the delayed JOL effect. The meta-analyses reported in the current study examined the predominant theoretical accounts as well as potential moderators of the delayed JOL effect. The first meta-analysis examined the relative accuracy of delayed compared with immediate JOLs across 4,554 participants (112 effect sizes) through gamma correlations between JOLs and memory accuracy. Those data showed that delaying JOLs leads to robust benefits to relative accuracy (g = 0.93). The second meta-analysis examined memory performance for delayed compared with immediate JOLs across 3,807 participants (98 effect sizes). Those data showed that delayed JOLs result in a modest but reliable benefit for memory performance relative to immediate JOLs (g = 0.08). Findings from these meta-analyses are well accommodated by theories suggesting that delayed JOL accuracy reflects access to more diagnostic information from long-term memory rather than being a by-product of a retrieval opportunity. However, these data also suggest that theories proposing that the delayed JOL effect results from a memorial benefit or the match between the cues available for JOLs and those available at test may also provide viable explanatory mechanisms necessary for a comprehensive account.     

The influence of stimulus-set size on developmental changes in cognitive control and conflict adaptation

Cognitive control abilities substantially improve from early childhood to adulthood. The primary aim of this study was to examine the influence of stimulus-set size on developmental changes in cognitive control abilities such as task switching, interference control, and conflict adaptation. We assumed that a small stimulus set used in a task-switching paradigm would induce stronger task-stimulus priming that might increase the need for control, thereby amplifying age differences in cognitive control abilities. Therefore, we compared task-switching performance in a group of participants responding to a small stimulus-set (N=4) with a group responding to a large stimulus-set (N=96) in three age groups: kindergarten children (4.1-6.0 years of age), elementary school children (6.1-9.0 years of age), and young adults (21.0-28.0 years of age) on conflicting vs. non-conflicting trials (interference control) and following conflicting vs. non-conflicting trials (conflict adaptation). Results on the basis of error rates support the view that a small stimulus-set size during task switching (i.e., larger task-stimulus priming) increases the need for control as we found (a) worse conflict adaptation on task-repetition trials only for small but not for large set sizes and (b) larger interference costs under small than large set-size condition for elementary school children as compared with young adults. Kindergarten children were less sensitive to the set-size manipulation and showed major problems in interference control while being in a task-switching situation, even if no actual task switch was required, possibly reflecting their inability to represent complex higher-order task rules.     

The effects of desire for control and extrinsic rewards on the illusion of control and gambling

The role of individual differences in the desire to control events in an illusion of control situation was examined. Subjects high and low in the desire for control played several trials of a gambling game under conditions either facilitating or not facilitating the perception that the subject had control over the outcome of the game. Half of the subjects were allowed to trade their winnings in on prizes at the end of the experiment. The other half played the game without extrinsic incentives. It was found that high desire-for-control subjects were more susceptible to the illusion of control, but only when the winnings could be traded in on prizes. Desire for control level and illusion of control manipulations did not appear to affect betting behavior in the absence of extrinsic rewards.     

The role of rewards and reinforcements in early education programs: III the use of concrete rewards

Discussion in this paper centers on the role of concrete reinforcers in educational programs. It is argued that despite “language” differences, considerable overlap exists in the papers presented by Hodges and Brophy (see previous two articles, this issue). Further, it is suggested that the inconsistencies and contradictions which do exist cannot be reconciled with existing data and that new research must be undertaken to clarify the issues.     

The control of saccade size and fixation duration in reading: The limits of linguistic control

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - This experiment investigates how information about six letter spaces to the right of the current fixation point is used to guide the eye in reading. It...     

The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on risk and delayed rewards: a life history theory approach

Why do some people take risks and live for the present, whereas others avoid risks and save for the future? The evolutionary framework of life history theory predicts that preferences for risk and delay in gratification should be influenced by mortality and resource scarcity. A series of experiments examined how mortality cues influenced decisions involving risk preference (e.g., $10 for sure vs. 50% chance of $20) and temporal discounting (e.g., $5 now vs. $10 later). The effect of mortality depended critically on whether people grew up in a relatively resource-scarce or resource-plentiful environment. For individuals who grew up relatively poor, mortality cues led them to value the present and gamble for big immediate rewards. Conversely, for individuals who grew up relatively wealthy, mortality cues led them to value the future and avoid risky gambles. Overall, mortality cues appear to propel individuals toward diverging life history strategies as a function of childhood socioeconomic status, suggesting important implications for how environmental factors influence economic decisions and risky behaviors.     

The influence of gender stereotype on projection of aggression in the rosenzweig picture frustration study

The present study analyzes the aggressive responses of children to pictorially presented frustrating situations in the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Study in terms of the sex of the subjects and the sex of the figures. The sample consists of 22 male and 22 female children matched with each other in terms of a number of variables. The results reveal no effect of sex of the child on aggressive responses; however, the sex of the frustrated figure depicted in the pictures significantly affects type and direction of aggression in both male and female subjects. The findings are discussed in terms of gender stereotype.     

Reactive aggression in psychopathy and the role of frustration: Susceptibility,experience, and control

This article is a commentary on ‘Psychopathy, frustration, and reactive aggression: The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex’ ( Blair, 2010 ).     

The influence of self-construals on the ERP response to the rewards for self and mother

Individual self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) could be temporarily modulated by the priming effect. Our previous studies have found that when Chinese participants gambled for mother and for self, outcome feedback evoked comparable neural responses between two conditions. However, it remains unclear if the response to rewards for mother and for self would differ after independence self-construal priming. In this study, we manipulated participants’ self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) before a simple gambling task. The event-related potential (ERP) results reveal that when an interdependent self-construal was primed, the participants exhibited a comparable feedback-related negativity (FRN) elicited by outcome feedback for self and for mother. In contrast, independent self-construal priming resulted in a greater FRN elicited by outcome feedback for self than for mother. Meanwhile, the P3 component was insensitive to self-construal manipulation. These findings indicate the modulation effect of self-construal priming on the response to rewards for others.     

The prosodic expression of anger: Differentiating threat and frustration

A theory relating aggression and the pitch of vocalizations [Ohala, 1983, 1984] predicts that the expression of anger in humans should have a low pitch; however, experimentally anger is found to have a high pitch. A possible resolution of this discrepancy is that there are two different prosodic expressions of anger, one with low pitch and one with high pitch. To investigate this possibility, 27 different expressions of the phrase “Don't do that” were tape-recorded. Subjects first rated how angry each utterance sounded and then categorized each utterance as expressing either frustration, threat, disgust, advice, or emotional neutrality. Some utterances were rated as angry and categorized as frustration; other utterances were also rated as angry, but categorized as threat. Frustration correlated with higher fundamental frequency (F₀). Threat did not correlate with lower F₀, but it correlated with lower perceived pitch.     

Retrieval processes in perceptual recognition and cued recall: The influence of category size

The purpose of these experiments was to determine whether nonsemantic category size and other variables would influence perceptual recognition as they influence cued recall. Procedures developed by Jacoby and his associates were replicated with words belonging to either small or large nonsemantic categories and with recognition tested under bright-target/patterned-mask conditions. The results indicated that words belonging to larger nonsemantic sets were more difficult to identify. This finding and the results of other manipulations are discussed in relation to the interactive activation model and to the proposal that perceptual recognition performance is dependent on a retrieval process similar to that involved in recall prompted by nonsemantic cues.     

Generic overjustification: The interaction of extrinsic rewards

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that the value of one extrinsic reward will be undermined when another extrinsic reward is made contingent upon the same activity. Subjects were assigned to one of three experimental groups. Some were paid a contingent monetary reward for engaging in a monotonous and boring activity and were then given the opportunity to continue to work voluntarily for additional payment. Others were given both money and extra experimental credit for the required task, and were likewise offered additional pay for voluntary extra work. A third group of subjects received money for the required task, but were given no additional rewards for extra work. It was observed that the money + credit subjects did less extra work for pay than the money-only subjects. They also rated the monetary reward as having been of less value to them. Subjects who were paid during the initial task session but not for extra work did less additional work than those who were paid in both sessions, but did not differ in their ratings of the value of the monetary reward. It is concluded that extrinsic rewards are nonadditive, and that current models of undermined rewards are too limited to account for this phenomenon. A selective attention hypothesis is advanced as an alternative.     

Choice between rewards differing in amount and delay: Toward a choice model of self control

A concurrent-chain procedure was used to study pigeons' choices between rewards differing in both amount and delay. The shorter delay terminated with a 2-second access to grain whereas the longer delay terminated with a 6-second access to grain. The ratio of the delays was constant within a given condition while their absolute values were varied. Over conditions, ratios of 6:1, 3:1, and 3:2 were studied. As the absolute values of the delays to reinforcement increased, preference for the longer-delayed but larger reward decreased under both the 6:1 and 3:1 ratios, but increased under the 3:2 ratio. These results are inconsistent with choice models predicting no change in preference when the ratios of delays and amounts are held constant. In addition, the change in preference under the 3:1 ratio is inconsistent with a simple multiplicative interaction of the trade off between reinforcer amount and delay, and suggests that delay is a more potent determinant of choice than is amount. These results have implications for models that view choice between small immediate rewards and large but delayed rewards as underlying the behavior commonly called self control.