One of the challenges in addiction related work is the development of biobehavioral markers for early identification of risk for substance abuse and/or for outcomes assessments for interventions/treatments. Our findings suggest that behavioral challenges that require both cognitive control in the presence of tempting appetitive cues may be useful potential markers. Example of such behavioral assays include gambling tasks with high and low risk or “hot” and “cold” conditions described in this review 18, 37 or simple impulse control tasks that require suppressing a response to an appetitive/tempting cue 20. These tasks are reminiscent of the delay of gratification task developed by Mischel 125. In fact, performance on simple impulse control tasks such as these in adolescents and adults has been associated with their performance as toddlers on the delay of gratification task 28, 29. Mischel and colleagues have shown the high level of stability and predictive value of this task in later life. Relevant to substance abuse, they showed that the ability to delay gratification as a toddler, predicted less substance abuse (e.g., cocaine) later in life 126. In
