Rewards lose value as a function of delay. Previous studies suggest that delays have a bigger effect on reward value when people must wait during the delay. However, whether delays involve waiting or postponing has often been confounded with whether choices are about hypothetical or real rewards. The current study characterized the effects of waiting and postponing in hypothetical and experiential choice contexts separately. In Experiment 1 we observed steeper delay discounting for waiting than for postponing in choices about both hypothetical money and about experienced computer game points. Two factors potentially contributing to steeper discounting in choices about waiting are reduced access to other rewards and direct costs of waiting. In Experiment 2, we adapted the experiential delay-discounting task to manipulate each factor separately. Reduced access to other reinforcers had a bigger effect on delay discounting than direct costs of waiting. These results underscore the importance of considering the unique influence of waiting and associated opportunity costs in both basic delay-discounting research and in applied contexts.

中文翻译：

---

在经历延误期间，获得加固的机会减少会导致延误折扣

奖励随着延迟而失去价值。先前的研究表明，当人们在延误期间必须等待时，延误对奖励价值的影响更大。然而，延迟是否涉及等待或推迟常常与选择是关于假设的还是真实的奖励相混淆。目前的研究分别描述了假设和经验选择背景下等待和推迟的影响。在实验 1 中，我们观察到，在关于假设金钱和经验丰富的电脑游戏点的选择中，等待的延迟折扣比推迟的延迟折扣更大。可能导致等待选择大幅折扣的两个因素是获得其他奖励的机会减少和等待的直接成本。在实验 2 中，我们采用了经验延迟折扣任务来分别操纵每个因素。与等待的直接成本相比，获得其他强化物的机会减少对延迟贴现的影响更大。这些结果强调了在基本延迟贴现研究和应用环境中考虑等待和相关机会成本的独特影响的重要性。