Delay of gratification tasks require an individual to forgo an immediate reward and wait for a more desirable delayed reward. This study used an ecologically valid measure of delayed gratification to test the hypothesis that preadolescents with higher BMI would be less likely to delay gratification. Healthy Hawks is a 12-week educational/behavioral obesity intervention at the University of Kans...

In this longitudinal study, the proportion of time preschoolers directed their attention away from rewarding stimuli during a delay-of-gratification task was positively associated with efficiency (greater speed without reduced accuracy) at responding to targets in a go/no-go task more than 10 years later. The overall findings suggest that preschoolers' ability to effectively direct their attent...

Obese (n = 20) and normal weight (n = 20) children (8-11 years) were compared using the delay of gratification paradigm. All children were asked to choose between an immediate reward or a larger delayed (one day) reward. Half the children were offered an edible incentive and half a non-edible incentive. Results showed that the obese choose immediate rewards more often than normals only when the...

This study explores the intergenerational transmission of time preferences and focuses on the question which specific aspects of mother’s time preference are related to her preschool child’s ability to delay gratification. We provide a new procedure for assessing the parameters of a “quasi-hyperbolic” discount function (Laibson, 1997) using two trade-off experiments. We apply the procedure to a...

We replicate the Stanford marshmallow experiment with a sample of 141 preschoolers and find a correlation between lack of self-control and 2D:4D digit ratio. Children with low 2D:4D digit ratio are less likely to delay gratification. Low 2D:4D digit ratio may indicate high fetal testosterone. If this hypothesis is true, our finding means high fetal testosterone children are less likely to delay...

We examined the neural basis of self-regulation in individuals from a cohort of preschoolers who performed the delay-of-gratification task 4 decades ago. Nearly 60 individuals, now in their mid-forties, were tested on "hot" and "cool" versions of a go/nogo task to assess whether delay of gratification in childhood predicts impulse control abilities and sensitivity to alluring cues (happy faces)...

We explored internal control of behavior using direct observation and parent report. Previous research has found that both the delay of gratification task and parent-reported effortful control predict later social ability and more positive outcomes in typically developing children. Children with autism spectrum disorder have previously been reported to have reduced effortful control, whereas de...

Walter Mischel and colleagues carried out a series of experiments between 1968 and 1974 on the ability of four year-old children attending a nursery school to delay gratification. The experimental paradigm involved offering each child a choice between having a treat, such as a cookie or a marshmallow, immediately, versus receiving a larger treat (e.g., two cookies) after an unspecified delay. I...

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 ...