The ability of children to delay gratification in an exchange task

The ability to wait for a reward is a necessary capacity for economic transactions. This study is an age-related investigation of children's ability to delay gratification in an exchange task requiring them to wait for a significant reward. We gave 252 children aged 2-4 a small piece of cookie, then offered them an opportunity to wait for a predetermined delay period before exchanging it for a larger one. In a first experiment, the children had to exchange the initial food item for rewards two, four or eight times larger. Results showed that children aged 3-4 years old sustained longer time lags for larger rewards than for smaller rewards. This effect was not found in 2-year-old subjects. In a second experiment, a reward 40 times larger than the initial piece was offered to determine the maximum waiting time that children could sustain. All age groups increased their performances. Older children were more successful at waiting, but some children as young as 2 years old were able to tolerate delays of up to 16 min. Older children who chose to give up waiting earlier than their known capacity demonstrated anticipation skills which had not been seen in younger children, showing that they had anticipated an increase in the time lag, and that they had considered both time and reward value when making their decision. Despite the age effect, we did not establish any limits for delaying gratification in children. This study may have educational implications for dealing with behavioral misconduct, which is known to be related to impulsivity control in young children.     

Affect and delay of gratification

Three experiments investigated the influence of positive and negative affect manipulations on children's preferences for small immediate versus large delayed rewards. Positive and negative affect were induced via verbal instructions to imagine happy and sad experiences. Elementary school children were randomly assigned to a control condition or to one of several treatment conditions consisting of two affect manipulations: a positive followed by a negative, the reverse, and (in the third experiment) two positives or two negatives. In some conditions (in the second and third experiments) measurement of delayed reward preference followed the first and second affect inductions whereas in other conditions (in the second and third experiments) measurement followed only the second affect manipulation. As predicted, negative affect subjects chose fewer large delayed rewards than did positive affect subjects during the first assessment (p < .02). At the second assessment, comparison among treatment and control conditions revealed the influence of a prior commitment effect which negated the potential influence of a second affect manipulation on preference for delayed rewards.     

Attraction and delay of gratification

The present study examined the degree to which differential attraction to the prizes could explain children's decisions in a delay of gratification situation. After rating the attractiveness of prizes, each child responded to four delay choice situations. While significant effects were obtained on only one choice pair, the results generalized to the other choices: nondelayers consistently perceived less discrepancy in attraction between the immediate and delayed rewards than did delayers. In general, the smaller discrepancy among nondelayers was due to a greater attraction to the immediate prize. As predicted, these results held only for “inconsistent” children and not for children who consistently delayed or did not delay across all four choices. The implications of this finding for trait-situation explanations of delay are discussed. While it was predicted that differential attraction would explain previously reported SES differences in delay tendencies, middle and lower SES children responded similarly, both in level of attraction to the prizes and actual delay behavior.     

Measurement of delay of gratification

To determine if psychoanalytic and social learning theorists are referring to the same phenomenon when they speak of "delay of gratification", 26 college undergraduates were divided into high and low groups on the basis of their scores on a "money-spending" questionnaire (a social learning measure). The difference between these two groups with respect to Rorschach M responses (the psychoanalytic measure) was nonsignificant. It was suggested that psychoanalytic and social learning theorists are probably referring to different phenomena when they speak of "delay of gratification."     

Processes operative during delay of gratification

Sixty-four middle-class preschool children chose between waiting for a preferred item and receiving a less desired item immediately. The items were of different classes, i.e., one food and one toy, and subjects waited with one, both, or neither of the rewards available for viewing. The likelihood that a subject would continue waiting for the delayed reward was found to increase as a function of previous waiting time rather than decrease or remain constant as required by two current theories of delay of gratification processes, an aversive affect model implied by Mischel and Ebbesen (1970) and Atkinson and Birch's (1970) dynamics of action. Although display of rewards impaired successful delay, replicating previous results, dynamics of action predictions of differential effects for display of immediately available and delayed outcomes of different classes were not confirmed. Systematic observation of spontaneous subject activities during the delay period offered additional support for the notion that distraction facilitates successful waiting behavior. A decision-attention model is proposed to account for the present results as well as those of previous studies of delay of gratification.We would like to thank the director, Mr. Jack Lewis, and the staff of the Red Bell Nursery of Plymouth, Michigan, for helping us obtain subjects for this study and providing access to their facilities. We are also grateful to Ms. Shirley St. Peter and Ms. Carolyn Jagacinski for their work as experimenters.     

Priming pride promotes delay of gratification

Motivation and Emotion - Distinct positive emotions signal adherence to specific goals: pride signals the successful pursuit of long-term goals, while joy signals the successful pursuit of...     

Locus of control and the ability to tolerate gratification delay: When it is better to be an external

An experiment was conducted to investigate the relationship between the locus of control orientation of fourth-grade children and delay frustration experienced in self-imposed and externally imposed delay situations. Time estimation was used as the index of delay frustration, with greater time estimates being interpreted as indicating greater frustration. In a self-imposed delay situation, external subjects estimated a 5-min delay to be longer than did internal subjects, while in an externally imposed delay situation, internal subjects estimated a 5-min delay to be longer than did external subjects. The implications of the findings for an understanding of both the locus of control dimension and delay behavior are discussed.     

Subjective probability and delay.

Human subjects indicated their preference between a hypothetical $1,000 reward available with various probabilities or delays and a certain reward of variable amount available immediately. The function relating the amount of the certain-immediate reward subjectively equivalent to the delayed $1,000 reward had the same general shape (hyperbolic) as the function found by Mazur (1987) to describe pigeons' delay discounting. The function relating the certain-immediate amount of money subjectively equivalent to the probabilistic $1,000 reward was also hyperbolic, provided that the stated probability was transformed to odds against winning. In a second experiment, when human subjects chose between a delayed $1,000 reward and a probabilistic $1,000 reward, delay was proportional to the same odds-against transformation of the probability to which it was subjectively equivalent.     

The delay of gratification test for adults: Validating a behavioral measure of self-motivation in a sample of older people

Most previous delay of gratification tests were developed for children and are inappropriate for application in adults. The authors therefore developed the Delay of Gratification Test for Adults (DoG-A), which includes four types of reward that are meaningful to adults, namely snacks, real money, hypothetical money, and magazines. Four subscores and two composite scores can be calculated. This study is the first to evaluate the DoG-A and to investigate its association with external variables. A community sample of 147 cognitively healthy participants aged between 60 and 94 years completed a questionnaire and cognitive tests measuring delay discounting, self-regulation, motivational self-concept, personality, wellbeing, and cognitive function. The intercorrelations of the subscales were low to medium and the internal consistency of the composite scores was moderate (?? = .4), indicating relative domain independence of the four reward types. The nomological net established by investigating the relations of the DoG-A with other constructs proved to be fairly meaningful. The correlations of all subscales with the delay discounting rate were significant and moderate. The Snacks subscale showed the most consistent pattern of results in terms of moderate positive correlations with self-reported motivation regulation, optimism, dutifulness, and deliberation. The Snacks subscale also correlated with various measures of wellbeing. A regression analysis showed that DoG Snacks remained a significant predictor of wellbeing when self-reported self-regulation and other variables were controlled. These findings indicate that the DoG-A yields an interpretable behavioral measure of self-motivation and offers a developmentally adequate extension of the delay of gratification paradigm for use with adults.     

Cognitive and personality factors in the delay of gratification of hemodialysis patients

On the basis of Mischel's (1984) social learning analysis of the process of delay of gratification in children and in line with Bandura's (1977) self-efficacy theory, we developed a model of delay of gratification in adults and tested it on dialysis patients who were continuously required to comply with a stringent regimen of fluid-intake to keep alive. We hypothesized that patients' self-evaluations of their past compliance and their efficacy expectations would be associated with their actual delay behavior. Underlying these process-regulating cognitions would be stable competencies, such as learned resourcefulness (i.e., one's self-control skills). Fifty-three dialysis patients self-evaluated their fluid intake compliance, their efficacy expectations, and their health beliefs. Resourcefulness was assessed by Rosenbaum's Self-Control Schedule. Actual fluid-intake compliance was reliably assessed by the mean body weight increase between dialyses during the 3-month period prior to the study and during two follow-up periods. The results supported the model. On the one hand, self-efficacy expectations were related to persistence with the fluid diet and on the other hand to subjects' self-evaluation of their past adherence behavior as well as to their resourcefulness. Although the path model suggested a causal pattern, the correlational nature of the study precluded any conclusions on cause-effect relationship.     

Strategic attention deployment for delay of gratification in working and waiting situations

Two studies examined whether the detrimental effects of attention to rewards on delay of gratification in waiting situations holds-or reverses-in working situations. In Study 1, preschoolers waited or worked for desired delayed rewards. Delay times increased when children worked in the presence of rewards but, as predicted, this increase was due to the distraction provided by the work itself. not because attention to rewards motivated children to sustain work. Analysis of spontaneous attention deployment showed that attending to rewards reduces delay time regardless of the working or waiting nature of the task. Fixing attention on rewards was a particularly detrimental strategy regardless of the type of task. Study 2 showed that when the work is not engaging, however, attention to rewards can motivate instrumental work and facilitate delay of gratification as long as attention deployment does not become fixed on the rewards.     

The nature of adolescent competencies predicted by preschool delay of gratification

Delay of gratification, assessed in a series of experiments when the subjects were in preschool, was related to parental personality ratings obtained a decade later for 95 of these children in adolescence. Clear and consistent patterns of correlations between self-imposed delay time in preschool and later ratings were found for both sexes over this time span. Delay behavior predicted a set of cognitive and social competencies and stress tolerance consistent with experimental analyses of the process underlying effective delay in the preschool delay situation. Specifically, children who were able to wait longer at age 4 or 5 became adolescents whose parents rated them as more academically and socially competent, verbally fluent, rational, attentive, planful, and able to deal well with frustration and stress. Comparisons with related longitudinal research using other delay situations help to clarify the important features of the situations and person variables involved in different aspects of delay of gratification.     

Delay of gratification and delay maintenance by rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)

The authors tested the self-control of rhesus macaques by assessing if they could refrain from reaching into a food container to maximize the accumulation of sequentially delivered food items (a delay-maintenance task). Three different versions of the task varied the quantity and quality of available food items. In the first 2 versions, food items accumulated across the length of the trial until a monkey consumed the items. In the 3rd task, a single less-preferred food item preceded a single more-preferred food item. Some monkeys delayed gratification even with relatively long delays between deliveries of items. However, the data suggested that self-control, in the majority of tested individuals, was not significantly different across different task versions and that self-control by macaques was not as prevalent in these tasks as it is in chimpanzees and human children.     

Influence of televised modeling and verbalization on children's delay of gratification

Voluntary delay of gratification in 9-year-old children was assessed 4 weeks prior to, immediately after, and 4 weeks subsequent to exposure to one of four televized films. The modeling group observed an adult female model exemplify high-delay behavior. The persuasion group observed the model verbalize good reasons for waiting. The persuasion-modeling group observed the model exemplify high-delay behavior and verbalize reasons for waiting. Subjects in each of the treatment groups emitted more delay choices on the posttest than control group subjects who observed the model exhibit neutral behavior. The greatest magnitude of change occurred when modeling and persuasive cues were combined. Treatment effects were still in evidence for the modeling and the persuasion-modeling groups after a period of 4 weeks.     

Individual differences in sensory integration predict differences in time perception and individual levels of schizotypy

To interact functionally with our environment, our perception must locate events in time, including discerning whether sensory events are simultaneous. The Temporal Binding Window (TBW; the time window within which two stimuli tend to be integrated into one event) has been shown to relate to individual differences in perception, including schizotypy, but the relationship with subjective estimates of duration is unclear. We compare individual TBWs with individual differences in the filled duration illusion, exploiting differences in perception between empty and filled durations (the latter typically being perceived as longer). Schizotypy has been related to both these measures and is included to explore a potential link between these tasks and enduring perceptual differences. Results suggest that individuals with a narrower TBW make longer estimates for empty durations and demonstrate less variability in both conditions. Exploratory analysis of schizotypy data suggests a relationship with the TBW but is inconclusive regarding time perception.     

Timing and time perception: A review of recent behavioral and neuroscience findings and theoretical directions

The aim of the present review article is to guide the reader through portions of the human time perception, or temporal processing, literature. After distinguishing the main contemporary issues related to time perception, the article focuses on the main findings and explanations that are available in the literature on explicit judgments about temporal intervals. The review emphasizes studies that are concerned with the processing of intervals lasting a few milliseconds to several seconds and covers studies issuing from either a behavioral or a neuroscience approach. It also discusses the question of whether there is an internal clock (pacemaker counter or oscillator device) that is dedicated to temporal processing and reports the main hypotheses regarding the involvement of biological structures in time perception.