The development of adaptive choice in a self-control paradigm.
Self-control for bigger-later rewards peaks in middle childhood, so tailor delay lengths to the child’s developmental level.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched kids pick between one candy now or five candies later. They tested children aged 4 to 12 in a quiet lab room. Each child made many choices while the team slowly made the wait longer.
What they found
Six- to nine-year-olds waited best. They usually picked the big pile even when the wait grew. Four-year-olds and twelve-year-olds gave up faster. As soon as the delay felt long, they grabbed the small immediate candy.
How this fits with other research
Hansen et al. (1989) ran the same kids and same task in a second paper. They again saw that only the middle kids cared about delay. This direct replication boosts our trust in the curve.
Reed et al. (1988) did the choice game with teens who had severe ID. The teens flipped from big-later to small-sooner as delays rose, just like the young neurotypical kids. The pattern crosses diagnoses.
Cullinan et al. (2001) later taught kids with ADHD to wait a full day. They slowly stretched the delay and kept the prize big. Their trained kids beat the age curve, showing self-control can be built.
Why it matters
Do not expect a four-year-old or an antsy teen to wait like a seven-year-old. Plan short delays for young kids and for clients who act younger than their age. If you need longer waits, first pick highly preferred snacks and then stretch the wait in small steps, just like Cullinan et al. (2001) did.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Sixteen girls (ages 4, 6, 9, and 12) performed on concurrent-chain schedules of reinforcement. The initial links were variable-interval 10-s schedules, and the terminal links offered a long delay (20, 30, 40, or 50 s) followed by two tokens or a short delay (10 s) followed by one token. Tokens were used to buy toys and sweets. The effect of increasing the delay to the large reward differed significantly across age groups. Whereas 6- and 9-year-olds maintained a strong preference for the larger, more delayed reward under all delay conditions, half of the 4-year-olds and all the 12-year-olds showed increasing preference for the small reward as the delay to the large reward increased. The results suggest a two-stage account of the development of self-control. In the first stage, behavior is increasingly controlled by reward size, as children learn how to wait for delayed rewards, and in the second phase behavior is increasingly controlled by reward rate, as children learn when it is in fact profitable to wait.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1989 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-77