Developmental trajectories of delay discounting from childhood to young adulthood: longitudinal associations and test-retest reliability

•Discounting of future monetary rewards increased rapidly from childhood through adolescence, and appeared to plateau in late adolescence.•Novel evidence that delay discounting may index aspects of cognitive control system more than reward processing system given observed developmental trajectories from the developmental transition from adolescence to young adulthood.•The present report suggests that delay discounting becomes substantially stable in middle-to-late adolescence, and may reflect a stable trait as opposed to a temporary state.•Area-under-the-curve may be a more suitable measure than log(k) for longitudinally assessing developmental trajectories of delay discounting behavior from adolescence into adulthood. Delay discounting (DD) indexes an individual’s preference for smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards, and is considered a form of cognitive impulsivity. Cross-sectional studies have demonstrated that DD peaks in adolescence; longitudinal studies are needed to validate this putative developmental trend, and to determine whether DD assesses a temporary state, or reflects a more stable behavioral trait. In this study, 140 individuals aged 9–23 completed a delay discounting (DD) task and cognitive battery at baseline and every-two years thereafter, yielding five assessments over approximately 10 years. Models fit with the inverse effect of age best approximated the longitudinal trajectory of two DD measures, hyperbolic discounting (log[k]) and area under the indifference-point curve (AUC). Discounting of future rewards increased rapidly from childhood to adolescence and appeared to plateau in late adolescence for both models of DD. Participants with greater verbal intelligence and working memory displayed reduced DD across the duration of the study, suggesting a functional interrelationship between these domains and DD from early adolescence to adulthood. Furthermore, AUC demonstrated good to excellent reliability across assessment points that was superior to log(k), with both measures demonstrating acceptable stability once participants reached late adolescence. The developmental trajectories of DD we observed from childhood through young adulthood suggest that DD may index cognitive control more than reward sensitivity, and that despite modest developmental changes with maturation, AUC may be conceptualized as a trait variable related to cognitive control vs impulsivity.