Your wish is my command! The influence of symbolic modelling on preschool children's delay of gratification

Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes

We replicated and extended Shoda, Mischel, and Peake's (1990) famous marshmallow study, which showed strong bivariate correlations between a child's ability to delay gratification just before entering school and both adolescent achievement and socioemotional behaviors. Concentrating on children whose mothers had not completed college, we found that an additional minute waited at age 4 predicted a gain of approximately one tenth of a standard deviation in achievement at age 15. But this bivariate correlation was only half the size of those reported in the original studies and was reduced by two thirds in the presence of controls for family background, early cognitive ability, and the home environment. Most of the variation in adolescent achievement came from being able to wait at least 20 s. Associations between delay time and measures of behavioral outcomes at age 15 were much smaller and rarely statistically significant.

Delay of gratification and time comprehension is impaired in very preterm children at the age of 4years

BACKGROUND

Very preterm infants more likely exhibit deficient executive functions than term born controls. Delay of gratification, as part of the executive functions, allows for rejecting an immediate in favor of a greater future reward. Time comprehension might help to delay gratification.

AIMS

We hypothesized that delay of gratification and time comprehension is less developed in preterm children and that time comprehension is associated with the ability to wait for a greater reward.

STUDY DESIGN

Very preterm children (<32weeks' gestation) and term born controls were tested for receptive language skills, time comprehension and delay of gratification at the (corrected) age of 4years.

SUBJECTS

25 preterm subjects (12 female; median: gestational age (GA) 28.3weeks, corrected age 4years, 22days) and 26 controls (16 female, median GA: 40.0weeks, age 4years, 25days) participated.

OUTCOME MEASURES

Correct answers in the time comprehension and receptive language task, waiting time in the delay-of-gratification task were measured.

RESULTS

Preterm subjects had less time comprehension than controls (43% vs. 53%, p=0.017, one-tailed) but receptive language skills were similar. Waiting time in the delay-of-gratification task was 3:42min in preterm subjects, versus 10:09min in controls (p=0.043, one-tailed). Even after controlling for language skills, waiting time correlated positively with time comprehension in both groups (r=0.399, p=0.004, two-tailed).

CONCLUSIONS

Preterm children's time comprehension and delay of gratification ability is impaired. Future research is warranted to investigate whether training in time comprehension increases the ability to delay gratification.

The relationship of delay of gratification and time comprehension in 4-year-old children

In a typical delay-of-gratification task, children have the choice between eating a small amount of treats immediately and waiting in order to receive a larger number of treats. To date, it has not been investigated whether children’s time comprehension is related to the ability to wait for the larger number of treats. Time comprehension can be tested by presenting children with three hourglasses containing different amounts of sand and asking them about the running time of the hourglasses (e.g., “Which hourglass will finish first?”). In this study, 75 four-year-old children were tested with a delay-of-gratification task, a time comprehension task, and a receptive language task. Children who ate the treat immediately in the delay-of-gratification task did not perform above chance level in the time comprehension task. In contrast, children who waited in the delay-of-gratification task, either for some time or until the end of the task, did perform above chance level. Correlation analyses revealed that performance in the time comprehension task and in the delay-of-gratification task correlated even after controlling for receptive language ability. Thus, children’s time comprehension is related to their ability to delay a prepotent response. The nature of this correlation is discussed.

Too cool? Symbolic but not iconic stimuli impair 4-year-old children's performance on the delay-of-gratification choice paradigm

A common method of improving the performance of children and non-human primates on the delay-of-gratification maintenance paradigm and measures of executive function (e.g., the Less is More task) is to represent the rewards subjects can acquire symbolically. This method, known as symbolic distancing, is thought to lower activation of the "hot" impulsive system and allow the "cool" rational system to dominate processing. Surprisingly, in contrast to its impact on the measures noted above, recent developmental and comparative studies have reported that symbolic distancing has a null or negative impact on performance on the delay-of-gratification choice paradigm. Here, we add to this literature by demonstrating that 4-year-old children's performance on the choice paradigm is impaired when symbolic stimuli, but not iconic stimuli (i.e., pictures of the rewards), are used to represent rewards. These data add to a growing body of comparative work demonstrating task manipulations have a similar impact on children and non-human primates and also support other research suggesting different decision making processes may underlie performance on the delay-of-gratification choice and maintenance paradigms.