The delay effect on outcome evaluation: results from an event-related potential study

Behavioral studies demonstrate that the timing of receiving gains or losses affects decision-making, a phenomenon known as temporal discounting, as participants are inclined to prefer immediate rewards over delayed ones and vice versa for losses. The present study used the event-related potential technique with a simple gambling task to investigate how delayed rewards and losses affected the brain activity in outcome evaluations made by 20 young adults. Statistical analysis revealed a larger feedback-related negativity (FRN) effect between loss and gain following immediate outcomes than following future outcomes. In addition, delay impacted FRN only in gain conditions, with delayed winning eliciting a more negative FRN than immediate winning. These results suggest that temporal discounting and sign effect could be encoded in the FRN in the early stage of outcome evaluation.