ArticleDrug and alcohol dependence2019
Practicing prospection promotes patience: Repeated episodic future thinking cumulatively reduces delay discounting.
Article in Drug and alcohol dependence, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Is episodic future thinking effective in mitigating the influence of time preference in time trade-off?The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2025Trial
- Initial evaluation of domain-specific episodic future thinking on delay discounting and cannabis use.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Effects of episodic future thinking on reinforcement pathology during smoking cessation treatment among individuals with substance use disorders.Psychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Bleak present, bright future: II. Combined effects of episodic future thinking and scarcity on delay discounting in adults at risk for type 2 diabetes.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2021Trial
- Mothers' DASH diet adherence and food purchases after week-long episodic future thinking intervention.Appetite · 2020Trial
- Episodic future thinking modulates delay discounting in individuals with problematic substance use: a narrative review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Review
- Acute Stress Effect on Delay Discounting and Cannabis Demand Among Individuals Endorsing High-Frequency Cannabis Use.Cannabis (Albuquerque, N.M.) · 2025Article
- Connectivity Changes Following Episodic Future Thinking in Alcohol Use Disorder.Brain connectivity · 2024Article
- Patients with cocaine use disorder exhibit reductions in delay discounting with episodic future thinking cues regardless of incarceration history.Addictive behaviors reports · 2023Article
- Reducing short- and long-term cocaine craving with voluntary exercise in male rats.Psychopharmacology · 2022Article
- Prediction of delay discounting in intertemporal decisions by future thinking: Accounting for fluency, contents, and functions of future thoughts.Brain and behavior · 2022Article
- The phenotype of recovery VII: Delay discounting mediates the relationship between time in recovery and recovery progress.Journal of substance abuse treatment · 2022Article
- Effects of 6-month episodic future thinking training on delay discounting, weight loss and HbA1c changes in individuals with prediabetes.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2022Article
- Putting prospection into practice: Methodological considerations in the use of episodic future thinking to reduce delay discounting and maladaptive health behaviors.Frontiers in public health · 2022Review
- Delay discounting in suicidal behavior: Myopic preference or inconsistent valuation?Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2022Article
- Imagine to Remember: An Episodic Future Thinking Intervention to Improve Medication Adherence in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes.Patient preference and adherence · 2022Article
- Behavioral economic cigarette demand among individuals who smoke with and without obesity.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2021Article
- Written or drawn episodic future thinking cues improves delay discounting in adults.Learning and motivation · 2021Article
- Imagining the Future to Reshape the Past: A Path to Combine Cue Extinction and Memory Reconsolidation With Episodic Foresight for Addiction Treatment.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- Brief Negative Affect Focused Functional Imagery Training Abolishes Stress-Induced Alcohol Choice in Hazardous Student Drinkers.Journal of addiction · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDelay discounting, or the preference for smaller, sooner over larger, later rewards, has been associated with alcohol use disorder and problem drinking. Episodic future thinking has been suggested as an intervention to address steep delay discounting. In the present study, we examined the effect of up to six consecutive sessions of episodic future thinking.
methodsRepeated, within-subject data were collected from current and recent problem drinkers (n = 50) over six sessions. Linear mixed-effect models were used to estimate effects of repeated sessions and manipulations. Participants completed episodic future thinking interviews at up to six sessions, in which they generated personalized future events. Participants also engaged with cues of scarcity. At each session, participants completed three delay discounting tasks under: a no-cue baseline condition, a future cue condition, and a scarcity cue condition.
resultsDelay discounting in the no cue condition did not change over time. Discounting rates were reduced in the future cue condition, and these effects grew larger with repeated sessions. In the scarcity condition, discounting rates were slightly higher, with no effect of repeated sessions.
conclusionsEpisodic future thinking reduced delay discounting rate while future cues were presented, and these effects grew larger with repeated sessions. This suggests that repeated episodic future thinking may cumulatively potentiate repair of excessive preference for immediate reward.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.