Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later

Abstract

We examined the neural basis of self-regulation in individuals from a cohort of preschoolers who performed the delay-of-gratification task 4 decades ago. Nearly 60 individuals, now in their mid-forties, were tested on "hot" and "cool" versions of a go/nogo task to assess whether delay of gratification in childhood predicts impulse control abilities and sensitivity to alluring cues (happy faces). Individuals who were less able to delay gratification in preschool and consistently showed low self-control abilities in their twenties and thirties performed more poorly than did high delayers when having to suppress a response to a happy face but not to a neutral or fearful face. This finding suggests that sensitivity to environmental hot cues plays a significant role in individuals' ability to suppress actions toward such stimuli. A subset of these participants (n = 26) underwent functional imaging for the first time to test for biased recruitment of frontostriatal circuitry when required to suppress responses to alluring cues. Whereas the prefrontal cortex differentiated between nogo and go trials to a greater extent in high delayers, the ventral striatum showed exaggerated recruitment in low delayers. Thus, resistance to temptation as measured originally by the delay-of-gratification task is a relatively stable individual difference that predicts reliable biases in frontostriatal circuitries that integrate motivational and control processes.

Fig. 1.

Left: Experiment 1 (outside the scanner). High and low delayers do not differ in performance on a go/nogo task when cues are “cool” stimuli (neutral facial expressions), but low delayers make more errors when the cues are “hot” (emotional faces). Right: Experiment 2 (inside the scanner). A similar pattern is observed. Error bars denote SEM.

Fig. 2.

Main effects of the go/nogo task. (A) The right inferior frontal cortex was associated with correct inhibition of a response (nogo) relative to making a correct response (go). Left: Activation map depicting right inferior frontal gyrus activation, thresholded at P < 0.05, whole-brain corrected, displayed on a representative high-resolution T1-weighted axial image. Right: Percentage change in MR signal for “go” and “nogo” trials in the inferior frontal gyrus. (B) Left primary motor cortex was associated with making a correct response (go) relative to correctly withholding a response (nogo). Left: Activation map depicting activation in left precental gyrus, thresholded at P < 0.05, whole-brain corrected, displayed on a representative high-resolution T1-weighted axial image. Right: Percentage change in MR signal for “go” and “nogo” trials in the left precentral gyrus. (C) Left cerebellum was associated with making a correct response (go) relative to correctly withholding a response. Left: Activation map depicting left cerebellum activation, thresholded at P < 0.05, whole-brain corrected, displayed on a representative high-resolution T1-weighted axial image. Right: Percentage change in MR signal for “go” and “nogo” trials in the right cerebellum.

Fig. 3.

Differential inferior frontal gyrus recruitment between nogo and go trials is more pronounced in high delayers than in low delayers. The right inferior gyrus (region shown in Fig. 2A) showed a significant interaction between group and trial type, with greater polarization of inferior frontal gyrus response to “nogo” relative to “go” trials for high delayers. Error bars denote SEM.

Fig. 4.

Low delay ability in early childhood predicts greater recruitment of ventral striatum when inhibiting responses to positive social cues 40 y later. Left: Activation map for the three-way interaction of task, emotion, and delay group depicting ventral striatum activity thresholded at P < 0.05, small volume corrected, displayed on a representative high-resolution T1-weighted axial image. Right: Ventral striatal response to happy “nogo” trials in high and low delayers.