Quantifying the contribution of individual variation in timing to delay-discounting

Lukinova, Evgeniya; Erlich, Jeffrey C.

Abstract

Delay-discounting studies in neuroscience, psychology, and economics have been mostly focused on concepts of self-control, reward evaluation, and discounting. Another important relationship to consider is the link between intertemporal choice and time perception. We presented 50 college students with timing tasks on the range of seconds to minutes and intertemporal-choice tasks on both the time-scale of seconds and of days. We hypothesized that individual differences in time perception would influence decisions about short experienced delays but not long delays. While we found some evidence that individual differences in internal clock speed account for some unexplained variance between choices across time-horizons, overall our findings suggest a nominal contribution of the altered sense of time in intertemporal choice.

Citation

Lukinova, E., & Erlich, J. C. (2021). Quantifying the contribution of individual variation in timing to delay-discounting. Scientific Reports, 11(1), Article 18354. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97496-w

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 19, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Sep 15, 2021
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2021
• Deposit Date: Oct 20, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 21, 2022
• Journal: Scientific Reports
• Electronic ISSN: 2045-2322
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: 18354
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97496-w
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/12620630
• Publisher URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97496-w