Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 5, 2026

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task
Published on: January 9, 2016
Further comparison of 5-trial adjusting delay and probability loss tasks over a wide range of amounts
Melissa Miranda1, Austin Drabek1, David J Cox1
1University of Florida, Department of Psychology, United States.
Abstract:
Researchers have recently developed brief methods to measure discounting. One brief method uses 5-trial adjusting-delay or -probability tasks. These tasks have provided similar rates of discounting to traditional tasks with monetary gains, but the accuracy with losses have been mixed. Differences in loss discounting across tasks may have been due to the amounts used in previous experiments. Therefore, we had undergraduate students (N = 93) complete two types of discounting tasks across losses ranging from $10 to $10 million. Consistent with previous research using traditional measures, discounting did not differ between tasks or across amounts used. 5-trial discounting tasks of losses provide similar rates of discounting compared to traditional adjusting amount tasks for both probability and delay.
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