Time-Based Cognition and Working Memory Explain Changes in Delay Discounting Through Adolescence

Individuals of all ages face choices between immediate but smaller and delayed but larger rewards. In a decision process known as delay discounting, people tend to devalue options that are realized farther into the future. Several candidate cognitive mechanisms have been proposed to underpin such choices: inhibition (overriding a prepotent response), prospection (orienting to the future), working memory (manipulating information held in mind), reward motivation (activating behavior for reward), and time perception (subjectively judging time horizons). These mechanisms change through adolescence, in tandem with delay discounting decisions becoming more patient from childhood to adulthood. However, the cognitive mechanisms principally responsible for developmental increases in patience remain contested. By measuring delay discounting alongside indices of inhibition, prospection, working memory, reward motivation, and time perception in the same participants (N = 159, 10–20 years, collected in the United States), the present study examined whether these mechanisms – alone or in combination – explained age variability in reward- and time-based choice in different stakes contexts. Mixed-effects modeling revealed that patience indeed increased with age, especially for higher- than lower-magnitude decisions. Dependency modeling identified dissociable and overlapping drivers of age-related changes in delay discounting: prospection mediated patience in lower-magnitude decisions whereas working memory mediated patience in higher-magnitude decisions; time perception mediated patience in both. Although compressed time perception supported older participants’ more patient choices overall, distinct cognitive mechanisms may become available during adolescence to underscore willingness to wait for larger later rewards, depending on decision stakes. These findings advance understanding of how multiple constituent processes scaffold the development of value-based choice.