Delay of gratification in preschoolers with and without autism spectrum disorder: Individual differences and links to executive function, emotion regulation, and joint attention.
Preschoolers with autism wait less and use poorer tactics, and the skill is not yet tied to executive function like in typical peers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested the preschoolers. Half had autism. Half were typical.
Kids sat at a table with a marshmallow on it. They could eat it now or wait for two later.
Cameras watched how long each child waited and what they did while waiting.
What they found
Children with autism waited half as long. Most gave in before five minutes.
They stared at the treat more and smiled less.
In typical kids, longer waiting linked to better executive function and calmer faces. In autism, those links did not show up.
How this fits with other research
Konke et al. (2026) looked at younger toddlers with early autism signs. They found the opposite: kids who could wait had stronger daily skills. The age gap matters. The toddler brain is more plastic, so early practice may pay off.
Eussen et al. (2016) used the same marshmallow test with Down syndrome. Like autism, those kids waited less, but poor language explained most of the short waits. In autism, language did not predict waiting. Different roads lead to the same short delay.
Cullinan et al. (2001) taught kids with ADHD to wait up to 24 hours using tiny practice steps. Their success hints we can train the skill in autism too, even if it is weak at first.
Why it matters
You now know preschool clients with autism will likely grab the first reward. Do not wait for self-control to bloom on its own. Start small: 5-second delays, then 10, then 30. Pair each wait with a visual timer and a clear rule. Track smiles and eye contact as bonus targets. Early practice may protect later adaptive skills, just as Andersson’s toddlers showed.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study examined delay of gratification behaviors in preschool-aged children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Recent research has found that elementary-aged children with autism spectrum disorder showed challenges with delay of gratification and that there were individual differences in terms of children's behaviors during the wait. We extend this work to a younger sample of children with autism spectrum disorder to understand whether these difficulties emerge by the preschool years. Moreover, we assessed whether individual differences in other key self-regulatory capacities (i.e. effortful control, emotion regulation, executive function, and joint attention) were related to delay of gratification wait durations or behavioral strategies. Findings revealed that preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder waited for a shorter duration, demonstrated more temptation-focused behaviors, and expressed less positive affect than their typical peers during the delay of gratification task. At the full-sample level, individual differences in children's temptation-focused behaviors (i.e. visual attention and verbalizations focused on the temptation) were related to children's executive function, joint attention, and parents' ratings of emotion regulation. When we examined associations within groups, the associations were not significant for the autism spectrum disorder group, but for typically developing children, there was a positive association between temptation-focused behaviors and emotion regulation.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2019 · doi:10.1177/1362361319828678