Written or drawn episodic future thinking cues improves delay discounting in children

Most people prefer immediate to delayed rewards, even when the immediate rewards are smaller, and children have stronger preferences for immediate rewards compared to delayed rewards. Thinking about vivid, positive future events, or episodic future thinking (EFT), increases the extent to which adolescents and adults choose larger delayed rewards over smaller immediate rewards (delay discounting, DD). While EFT has improved DD in adolescents, previous methodology used auditory or written cues, relying on verbal elaboration and reading of cues to improve DD. Research on autobiographical and episodic memory has shown improvements in retention when using self-drawn images. Images and visual cues are frequently used in studies with children and research is needed to study the use of visual EFT cues as a method to improve EFT effectiveness on DD in children. Research in adults showed that both written and drawn EFT cues improved DD compared to a written episodic recent cue control group. In this study 10–13-year-old children (n = 58) were randomized to an EFT-drawing, EFT-writing or an episodic recent thinking (ERT) control drawing group and completed a DD task and a delay of gratification task for real monetary rewards. We found that both EFT drawing and EFT writing improved DD and delay of gratification for real monetary rewards. This suggests EFT is effective at improving DD in multiple modalities.