Casey

• Ability to delay gratification important for societal and economic success
• ability to control alluring situations changes function with age
• Delay gratification relies on cognitive control- different methods can be used to achieve this and people use their own methods
• Jabbi+ Kaysers- role of inferior frontal gyrus involved with emotional interpretation + avoidance of risky behaviour
• Ventral striatum facilitates + balances motivation + inhibiting behaviour in a complex social interaction- found to be region closely associated with reward
• Brain imaging shows region of frontal cortices + frontal gyrus critically involved in resolving long term choice + behaviour + resolving inference in competing actions- limbic brain regions associated with immediate gratification
• Pre-schoolers who could delay gratification could control thoughts and actions better
• AIM- asses whether delay of gratification as children will predict impulse control + sensitivity to alluring social cues in 40s
• Alluring qualities of targets were manipulated to examine behavioural + neural correlates of delay gratification using fMRI
• fMRI- functional magnetic resonance imaging
• Quasi/ natural experiment

  IV- whether ppt was a high delayer or low delayer

  DV- performance on impulse control task (reaction times + accuracy+ imaging results on fMRI
• some parts were repeated measures- some ppts completed self-control scales in 20s and 30s + hot and cool tasks
• longitudinal study- ppts followed from 4-40
• Sample- suffered from attrition

  562- 4 yr olds

  155- 20 yr olds

  135- 30

  117- qualified for study- 59 did- 23m, 36f
• experiment 1- 32 HD- 12m, 20f

  - 27 LD- 11M, 16f

  Experiment 2- 15 HD- 5m, 10f

  - 11 LD- 7m, 4f - 1 male excluded
• Experiment 1- tested whether individuals who were less able to delay gratification as children would show less impulse control in the suppression of a response to hot cues
• Experiment 1- 59 ppts consented to take part- ppts completed two versions of a go/no go task - one version had male + female stimuli- one sex was go- press button other sex no go- withhold button press
• Experiment 1- before run- ppts given target. Had to respond as quickly+ accurately as possible, each face appeared for 500ms followed by 1s interval- 160 trials run in random order- 120 go/ 40 no-go
• Experiment 1- tasks presented using programmed computers sent to their homes
• Experiment 2- fMRI used to see neural correlates of delay gratification