A mechanism for reducing delay discounting by altering temporal attention.

The team tested a simple phrase: adding "nothing later" when offering a delayed reward. They ran four lab experiments with college students. Each trial let people pick between a small reward now or a bigger one later.

The twist was wording. Some choices said "You get $0 later." Others left the zero out. The researchers tracked how often people took the wait option.

Saying "nothing later" cut delay discounting. More students picked the bigger, later reward when the zero was spelled out. The effect held across all four tests.

The phrase worked by pulling attention to the far-off payoff, not by making the sequence feel nicer.

Renda et al. (2018) showed that rats get more patient after living with delays. Lam et al. (2011) now show that a quick verbal cue can do the same for humans. Together, they say both long experience and tiny wording shifts target the same temporal attention system.

Perez et al. (2015) stretched patience by slowly making delays longer. Their fading procedure and the zero-framing trick both boost tolerance for waiting, but they use different tools. Fading reshapes the delay itself; framing reshapes how we see it.

Rung et al. (2019) review dozens of ways to curb impulsive choice. The explicit-zero tactic sits neatly inside that map, giving clinicians one more low-cost option.

You can slip the phrase "and nothing later" into any delay contingency. It costs nothing and takes one second. Try it when you set up token boards, homework breaks, or savings goals. The cue may help clients wait for larger, long-term payoffs without extra training or bigger reinforcers.