How do representations of the future shape behavior? Prior research has shown that people’s willingness to wait for a future reward decreases with increases in time. At the same time, this research has also shown that such effects can depend on the vividness of the future reward, as well as, on individual differences. The present research offers a potential explanation for these additional effects in demonstrating how representations of the future can depend not only on objective distances in time, but also on how distances in time are construed. In a series of three experiments using a delay discounting paradigm, we show that participants who represent the future as close to the present are more likely to wait for future rewards than those who represent the future as far, even when the objective distances are held constant. Applications are discussed to public policy issues such as global warming, and to episodic future thinking

Congenital amusia is a lifelong musical disorder. It has been found that tonal-language speakers with amusia areimpaired in lexical tone perception. But it has also been found that tonal-language experience compensates the deficit in certainscenario, reducing prevalence rate of amusia in speakers of a highly complex tonal-language – Cantonese. Thus it remainsunclear whether lexical tone perception, especially its phonological processing, is impaired in Cantonese-speaking amusics.This study investigated the categorical perception of a continuum of lexical tone stimuli and pure tone analogues in Cantonese-speaking amusics and controls. The amusics showed reduced discrimination peak across the categorical boundary comparedto controls in lexical tone condition, suggesting impaired categorical perception; in pure tone condition, the amusics showedinferior performance on both between- and within-category discriminations, suggesting a deficit in auditory pitch processing.These findings indicate that phonological processing of tone is impaired in Cantonese-speaking amusics, despite possiblecompensation effect.