Sometimes it is difficult to “read” children, but parents can learn a lot about a child based on an experiment.  The Marshmallow Test was a study during the 1960s by a professor named Walter Mischel.  This study put nursery students into a room individually, handed them a marshmallow, and told them a simple statement: If the children can wait fifteen minutes without eating the marshmallow, they will be given another one.  This study showed that the same children turned out to be “better at life.”  His hypothesis was that if the children who waited those fifteen minutes have the ability to become healthier, more successful, and have the ability to stay in relationships better.

However, another study has be conducted by a graduate student at the University of Rochester named Celeste Kidd.  Kidd made her own version of the marshmallow test with a little twist to it.  She tested the children on their trust.  She entered the room with new art supplies and stickers while splitting up a group of children into two groups with around 14 children in each group.  She purposely was reliable and kept her word for one group but not the other.  She brought new and better art supplies after she told both groups she would, including bringing larger stickers.  Once the students realized that she hadn’t kept her word they did not wait those 15 minutes to receive the larger stickers or the better crayons.  While Mischel’s study focused mainly on determination, Kidd’s study focused on trust.  My hypothesis is that children need to know that they can trust someone in giving their word.  Children who do not have trust tend to lack the qualities the children have now that they are older.

1. The Marshmallow Test Teaches You About Your Children

Background: This article describes the Marshmallow Test and how Mr. Mishcel first came about this experiment.  He first noticed his daughters how they would control their impulses and he could not figure out what would be racing through their minds at that exact moment.  So he wanted to understand and read what they were thinking.  He then relates his perspective of the test and compares it to impulses of adults.

How I Intend to Use It: Walter Mischel compares how children and adults are not that different when it comes to dealing with they natural instincts and compulsions.  The children who show self control are more able to deal with frustration and defeat stress.  Mischel learned and quickly realized the different techniques that children show to delay gratification.

2. Insight on Kids’ Delayed Gratification

Background: There is an updated Marshmallow Test that was performed by Celeste Kidd.  The study included having a reliable source and an unreliable source.  Children who had a reliable researcher before the experiment would wait about four times longer to eat the marshmallow than children who had an unreliable interaction with a researcher.

How I Intend to Use It:  The children who were tested to delay gratification did correlate to higher success in life, including higher SAT scores and lower rates of substance abuse. However, in this article, it also talks about what the study did not show, which is why the children decided to wait or not to eat the marshmallows.  Kidd was volunteering at a homeless shelter in Santa Ana, California when she noticed how a little girl reacted when someone stood her lollipop. The little girl did not react at all, and didn’t say a word.  Kidd said, “If you’re in a place where things get taken all the time, then you get used to things being taken away.”

3. Willpower- Gratification

Background: The American Psychology Association delves into the 1960s study of Walter Mischel. It explains how the study works and Mischel’s reasoning for his hypothesis.  He proposed a system that he calls a “hot and cold” system to better explain why willpower succeeds or fails.  However, the study did not end with Mischel;  B.J. Casey, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medical College, along with Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, PhD, of the University of Washington tracked down 59 participants how took the marshmallow test and as children.

How I Intend to Use It:  The “hot and cool” system explains why willpower does not always succeed.  The cool system is basically a thinking system, where it integrates knowledge about sensations, feelings, and actions or goals, like reminding yourself not to eat the marshmallow.  The hot system is impetuous, spontaneous, and emotional, like putting the marshmallow in your mouth with thinking of the consequences.  The cool system would represent the angel on your shoulder and the hot system could represent the devil.

4. The Importance of Delayed Gratification for Children

Background:  This article describes how delayed gratification is important for children and how parents should become well aware. People who are more intelligence, and are more likely to delay discounting, meaning that those individuals are able less likely to give in to immediate gratification.  This article also mentions how introverted people compare to extroverted people and how they play a role with delayed gratification.

How I Intend to Use It: People usually only see the stereotypes of introverted and extroverted people, but they don’t realize how being one or the other can shape someone’s life.  Parents should understand how important delayed gratification really is. Delayed gratification is linked to the age of the child.  This article also explains different points on how parents should become more aware of this factor and they should cultivate delated gratification.

5. Neurological Aspect of Delayed Gratification

Background: Why would some people be able to delay gratification, while others easily give in? This article goes into the neurological aspect of it.  A new study at the Brain and Spine Institute in Paris have discovered that the brain’s memory help in resisting temptations, including the hippocampus.  Several studies were tested, such as having $10 today instead of $11 tomorrow.  This is a conflicting between a smaller reward today and a larger one at a later time.

How I Intend to Use It:  The Brain has many skills, however not many know the abilities that the different memory systems.  The hippocampus does not only play a role in your long term memory, but it can resist temptations as well.  The smaller reward and larger reward conflict Scientists have concluded that the dorsolateral part of the prefrontal cortex is important for making the choice to delay immediate gratification.

6. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304185104579439580036429524

Background: The marshmallow test claims that it can provide information about the brain development in children just as well as a multimillion dollar machine can.  The way children delay their gratification and hold back can tell us a lot about the functionality of each of the children’s frontal cortex in the brain which is central to impulse control.  The frontal cortex is part of the brain where is takes the loges to mature and is the last, which is around the age of 25 years old.

How I Intend to Use It: The article further discusses a second factor that affects the development of the frontal cortex.  Stress is a major factor in the lives of the impoverished which then makes stress a major component on a child’s brain development, specifically to their frontal cortex.

A study has been conducted on rats where the rats have been exposed to stress hormones causing their neurons in the frontal cortex to shrivel making the rats make bad judgments impulsively.

7. http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/2012/05/15/why-the-wealthy-are-healthy

Background: The article compares and contrasts the different lifestyles and effects that low income families have versus high income families.  Psychologist Sheldon Cohen tried to predict people’s susceptibility to disease by performing an experiment.  he injected a cold visrus into their noses and waited a few days and the results came out to be that more people became sick after they answered “no” to this question: “Did your parents own their own home when you were a child?” A lot less people got sick after answering “yes” to the same question.

How I Intend to Use It:  The article mentions low income people suffer a lot more from stress because they have to deal with their jobs, being unemployed, or being stuck in debt.  The article also mentions the ability to delay gratification.  Children with more self control were less likely to develop health problems in the future, and were less like to smoke or commit a crime.

8. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-marshmallow-test-suggests-trust-matters/

Background: In a more recent version of the Marshmallow Test, Celeste Kidd wanted to see if the reliability of the person had an effect on the children’s decision to take what they were given or wait and receive more.  She wanted to test if the children had trust or not.

How I Intend to Use It:  The researched found interesting that the children put in the unreliable group waited three minutes and two second before eating the marshmallow, while the children in the reliable group waited 12 minutes.  Just one child in the unreliable grip waited the full fifteen minutes and 9 children in the reliable group did not snack the first time.

9. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2219052/Scientists-test-trust-affects-ability-young-children-resist-temptation–promising-marshmallows.html

Background: A new study has been conducted in comparison to the marshmallow test.  This tests if willpower is correlated to or influence by trust as a natural ability. “The robust effect of manipulating the environment, concluded the authors, provides strong evidence that children’s wait times reflect rational decision making about the probability of reward.”

How I Intend to Use It: This experiment is an example of nature and nurture both having a role.  Temperament is inherited because infants behaviors differ from that at birth. “’But this experiment provides robust evidence that young children’s action are also based on rational decisions about their environment.”

10. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/books/review/how-children-succeed-by-paul-tough.html

Background: This article shows both sides of socioeconomic spectrum leading children to miss out on essential experiences.  For the wealthy and elite children are protected from misfortune, starting from the baby-proofed nurseries and continuing to their financier adulthoods kept by their parents.  While poor children have challenged all through their life and does not have an end to this misfortune, starting with poor nutrition and medical care to dysfunctional schools and neighborhoods.

How I Intend to Use It: It compared the Marshmallow Test to a story about Kewauna who was about to get into college and work hard.  She didn’t know any business ladies with briefcases and didn’t know any college graduates except for her teachers.   The choice was that she could have one marshmallow now or she can work hard for four years saving up, sacrificing, struggling, and then getting two marshmallows.