Impulsive choice and pre‐exposure to delays: iv. effects of delay‐ and immediacy‐exposure training relative to maturational changes in impulsivity
Practicing delayed rewards first makes later waiting easier, even for naturally impulsive learners.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Renda and colleagues worked with rats in a lab.
They wanted to see if living with delayed food first would make the animals pick bigger-later rewards later.
One group got every pellet after a wait. A second group got pellets right away. A third group had no special training.
After weeks, all rats faced the same choice: one immediate pellet or four pellets after a delay.
What they found
The delay-trained rats mostly waited for the four pellets.
The other two groups still grabbed the single pellet right away.
The training cut impulsive choice by a large amount.
How this fits with other research
Haynes et al. (2023) ran a near-copy of the study and got the same drop in impulsive picks.
The two papers back each other up, showing the effect is real across slightly different set-ups.
Cullinan et al. (2001) and Mueller et al. (2000) moved the idea to kids with ADHD. They stretched wait times bit by bit and the children learned to hold out for bigger prizes, even for a whole day.
Galtress et al. (2012) warned that rats naturally differ a lot in how patient they are. Renda’s team shows those built-in traits can still be overridden with enough delay practice.
Why it matters
If you teach clients to live through short waits first, they can learn to wait longer later.
Start by giving the reinforcer after a brief pause, then stretch the pause each day.
This simple fade can help learners pick homework before screen time, or save allowance for a bigger toy.
Try it next session: deliver praise or tokens a few seconds late, then add one extra second each trial.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Insert a 3-second pause before delivering the reinforcer, then add one second each block until the learner keeps working through the wait.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Impulsive choice describes preference for smaller, sooner rewards over larger, later rewards. Excessive delay discounting (i.e., rapid devaluation of delayed rewards) underlies some impulsive choices, and is observed in many maladaptive behaviors (e.g., substance abuse, gambling). Interventions designed to reduce delay discounting may provide therapeutic gains. One such intervention provides rats with extended training with delayed reinforcers. When compared to a group given extended training with immediate reinforcers, delay-exposed rats make significantly fewer impulsive choices. To what extent is this difference due to delay-exposure training shifting preference toward self-control or immediacy-exposure training (the putative control group) shifting preference toward impulsivity? The current study compared the effects of delay- and immediacy-exposure training to a no-training control group and evaluated within-subject changes in impulsive choice across 51 male Wistar rats. Delay-exposed rats made significantly fewer impulsive choices than immediacy-exposed and control rats. Between-group differences in impulsive choice were not observed in the latter two groups. While delay-exposed rats showed large, significant pre- to post-training reductions in impulsive choice, immediacy-exposed and control rats showed small reductions in impulsive choice. These results suggest that extended training with delayed reinforcers reduces impulsive choice, and that extended training with immediate reinforcers does not increase impulsive choice.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jeab.432