Glossary / Lexicon

Choice delay task refers to the activity in which people can choose between a reward now and a slightly larger one later.

Choice delay task is a paradigm used in psychology research to study decision making, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility. It involves presenting participants with a choice between two or more options, but with a delay between the time of the choice and the time of the outcome. The task measures the participant's ability to resist the temptation of an immediate reward in favor of a larger reward that is delayed.

In a typical choice delay task, participants are presented with two options, one of which provides an immediate, small reward (e.g., one dollar) and the other of which provides a larger, delayed reward (e.g., five dollars). The delay between the time of the choice and the time of the reward is varied across trials, with some trials having shorter delays (e.g., 5 seconds) and others having longer delays (e.g., 30 seconds). Participants are instructed to choose the option that they prefer, and their choices and response times are recorded.

One well-known version of the choice delay task is the delay discounting task. In this task, participants are presented with a series of choices between an immediate, smaller reward and a delayed, larger reward. The delay between the choice and the reward is gradually increased across trials, and participants are asked to indicate their preference for each option. The results of the delay discounting task can be used to quantify the degree to which a participant values immediate versus delayed rewards, and this measure has been linked to a range of real-world behaviors, including addiction, impulsivity, and financial decision making.

Another similar task is the Iowa Gambling Task, which measures decision-making abilities in the context of risk and reward. In this task, participants are presented with four decks of cards and are instructed to choose cards from them in order to win money. However, some decks have higher payouts and higher losses, and participants must learn through trial and error which decks are more advantageous. Like the choice delay task, the Iowa Gambling Task assesses participants' ability to make choices that maximize long-term gains, rather than immediate rewards.

Overall, the choice delay task and similar tasks are valuable tools for studying the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying decision making, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility. They can help researchers understand how people weigh the costs and benefits of different options, and how they balance immediate and delayed rewards.

In conclusion, the choice delay task is a popular paradigm used in psychology research to investigate decision-making, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility. It involves presenting participants with choices between immediate and delayed rewards and measuring their ability to resist immediate temptations in favor of larger, delayed rewards. Similar tasks, such as the delay discounting task and the Iowa Gambling Task, are also used to study these phenomena. By using these tasks, researchers can gain valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying human decision making and behavior.