The Relationship Between the Development of Time Perception and Delay of Gratification

Delaying gratification is the ability to resist immediate rewards for larger or more desirable delayed rewards, and is important to individual and societal success. Many factors involved in delaying gratification have been well established, but the role of time perception is not well understood. Given that individuals experience time differently, these differences may influence choices regarding temporal delays. To explore how the development of time perception plays a role in willingness to delay gratification, 20 7-year-old children participated in time perception tasks, a snack delay task, a hypothetical temporal discounting task, and a behavioral motor inhibition task. Children who had a tendency to underestimate the length of temporal durations were more willing to delay gratification than children who had a tendency to overestimate. This represents the first demonstration that tendencies to overversus underestimate time can influence decisions about delayed rewards. This work has implications for the emphasis of measuring and controlling for time perception in future delay of gratification studies, as well as teaching strategies regarding temporal education.