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Updated: May 22, 2026

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task
Published on: January 9, 2016
The effect of delay and individual differences on children's tendency to guess
Amanda H Waterman1, Mark Blades
1Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. a.h.waterman@leeds.ac.uk
Abstract:
Few researchers have investigated the factors that influence children's tendency to indicate correctly when they do not know the answer to a question. In this study, 5- to 8-year-olds witnessed a staged event in their classroom and were subsequently interviewed about that event either the following day or after 5 months. Some of the questions were answerable based on the information in the event, and some were unanswerable such that children would have had to guess to provide an answer. Individual-difference measures were taken of children's verbal ability and self-perceptions. Delay, verbal ability, and children's self-perceptions all affected whether children correctly indicated when they did not know the answer to a question.
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