Cohort Effects in Children's Delay of Gratification
Cohort Effects in Children's Delay of Gratification
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DOI：
10.1037/dev0000533
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发表时间：
2018-08-01
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Mischel, Walter
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Carlson, Stephanie M.;Shoda, Yuichi;Mischel, Walter
20世纪60年代，在斯坦福大学的宾幼儿园，孩子们可以选择立即获得较小的奖励，或者等到实验者回来后再获得较大的奖励。从那时起，“棉花糖测试”已被用于许多研究，以评估延迟满足。然而，没有先前的研究比较了几十年来儿童的表现。普遍的看法是，今天的孩子们等待的时间更短，更喜欢立即得到满足。研究1在对美国成年人（N = 354; Mdn年龄= 34岁）的调查中证实了这一直觉。为了检验这一预测的有效性，研究2分析了20世纪60年代末、20世纪80年代和21世纪初三个出生队列中840名典型发育中的美国儿童的平均延迟满足时间（10分钟）的原始数据，这些儿童来自类似的中高社会经济背景，在三次测试中年龄（3至5岁）匹配。与普遍的看法相反，结果显示，延迟随时间的推移呈线性增加（p <0.0001，eta（p）2 = 0.047），因此21世纪初的儿童比20世纪60年代的儿童平均多等待2分钟，比20世纪80年代的儿童多等待1毫米。这一模式在年龄、性别、地理和抽样效应方面是稳健的。我们认为，象征性思维、技术、学前教育和公众对执行功能技能的关注的增加促成了这一发现，但我们警告说，需要在不同人群中进行更多的研究，以检验研究结果的普遍性，并确定因果因素。
In the 1960s at Stanford University's Bing Preschool, children were given the option of taking an immediate, smaller reward or receiving a delayed, larger reward by waiting until the experimenter returned. Since then, the "Marshmallow Test" has been used in numerous studies to assess delay of gratification. Yet, no prior study has compared the performance of children across the decades. Common wisdom suggests children today would wait less long, preferring immediate gratification. Study 1 confirmed this intuition in a survey of adults in the United States (N = 354; Mdn age = 34 years). To test the validity of this prediction, Study 2 analyzed the original data for average delay-of-gratification times (out of 10 min) of 840 typically developing U.S. children in three birth cohorts from similar middle-high socioeconomic backgrounds in the late 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s, matched on age (3 to 5 years) at the trine of testing. In contrast to popular belief, results revealed a linear increase in delay over tune (p < .0001, eta(p)2 = .047), such that children in the 2000s waited on average 2 min longer than children in the 1960s, and 1 mm longer than children in the 1980s. This pattern was robust with respect to age, sex, geography and sampling effects. We posit that increases in symbolic thought, technology, preschool education, and public attention to executive function skills have contributed to this finding, but caution that more research in diverse populations is needed to examine the generality of the findings and to identify causal factors.