Delay Discounting of Monetary Outcomes by Justice-Involved Male Adolescents and College Students

Abstract

Delay discounting of hypothetical monetary outcomes by justice-involved youth adolescents was compared to that of college students to lay a foundation for future discounting work with justice-involved youth. We administered a hypothetical monetary delay-discounting task to three groups: (1) justice-involved adolescent males; (2) college student males; and (3) college student females. Using nonlinear regression, we fit the exponential, hyperbolic, and hyperboloid models to each data set both individually and at the group level. We determined the best fitting model for individual data sets and group data using the Information-Theoretic approach to model comparisons. For group averages, a hyperbolic model was slightly better than hyperboloid for justice-involved youth and college males, but the hyperboloid model was marginally better for college females. The evidence for any one model was modest to marginal, however. There was considerable variability in which model fit individual data best within all groups, each model being best for some participants. Regardless of the model, justice-involved youth discounted delayed monetary outcomes much more steeply than college males or females. The last two groups did not differ from each other. Two limitations can be noted. The mode for delivering the discounting tasks was different for the justice-involved youth as compared with the college students, an accommodation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Discounting functions from many justice-involved youth had to be discarded because of poor control by delay to the larger-later option. Findings from this study will inform future work on delay discounting by justice-involved youth and may help to inform treatment of this population in the future.