Translator: Lenka Gondolova Reviewer: Zuzana Šplhová
If I offered you 100 euros that you can take home now
or you go home with nothing,
but you come back
in two weeks and you get 500,
what would you choose?
Or imagine that you’re single
and you could have an average partner right now
or you could have a perfect partner in 5 years,
but for the next 5 years
you would have to stay single.
Most people find the bigger reward more attractive;
whether it’s 500 euros or an ideal partner.
But the fact is that a lot fewer people are willing to wait
for those things.
People’s willingness and ability to wait,
and when it emerges in the development,
was first researched by Walter Mischel,
who conducted experiments with 3 to 5-year-olds.
He researched what is called the ability to delay gratification,
which is the ability to give up an immediate smaller reward
in order to get a larger reward in the future.
In Mischel’s experiment, an experimenter offered children a candy
and told them that they could either eat it immediately,
or wait for him to return and receive two candies.
You might think that it’s not so difficult
to wait for sweets, but you have to realize
that for a child in this age, two candies is a significant reward
and waiting for 15 minutes feels like an eternity.
As I said before.
The larger reward is a more tempting alternative
and even small children would initially choose to wait
and have two candies.
But what is important in delaying gratification
is not just making the initial choice
but also being able to endure the waiting.
Oftentimes the waiting can be very frustrating
and because of it, a lot of people
change their decision and take the smaller reward
rather than waiting for the larger reward.
This is what the experiment looks like.
(Laughter)
While the children are waiting,
often they smell the candy
or eat a tiny bit.
Very often when I got back to the room
the candy would be licked all over and then put back.
(Laughter)
Some children did show the ability to delay gratification
and were able to wait for the two candies.
But some did not.
An interesting and important result
is that Mischel's as well as other subsequent research
revealed that the children who can delay gratification
are more verbally and socially competent,
they are more attentive and rational,
they have better ability to plan when they are older,
they are less likely to be overweight,
have better results at school,
and better-quality relationships.
On the other hand, the children unable to delay gratification
have been shown to have worse results at school,
more problems with regulating their emotions,
more problems with being overweight,
and prone to exhibit maladaptive and addictive behaviours.
As we can see,
what may look like a seemingly unimportant ability
seems to have serious consequences.
That is why, I, as someone who studies cognitive science
and developmental psychology
became interested in this topic.
Specifically, I began to wonder if it is possible
to improve children’s ability to delay gratification
in order to give them better chances
for a higher quality of life.
I decided to research this topic in two field sites.
The first was Slovakia
and the second Vanuatu.
You might know Slovakia,
so I’ll just tell you more about Vanuatu.
Vanuatu is a small archipelago
comprised of over 80 islands.
Over 100 languages are spoken on the islands.
The vast majority of places
have no electricity or running water.
People mostly live off
of what they grow or catch.
For example, fishing is widespread.
One of the consequences
of the fact that there is no electricity
is that people have no way to store extra food
which is why they barter.
People often share what they have with others.
The first 7 grades of school are compulsory
but many children don't go to school at all.
It is not because they do not want to,
but because sometimes the schools are too far
with restricted access.
And during the rainy season,
it is often very complicated to get anywhere.
Vanuatu is a country
where the people value traditions
and respect.
They live in small tribes with their own local authorities.
Compared to Vanuatu
Slovakia is a lot safer,
almost boring.
That's why it was interesting
to compare these countries.
In the Vanuatu culture
people don’t own as much
and life has a much slower pace.
It was interesting to see
whether this lifestyle, this culture
can influence the ability to delay gratification.
Or, on the other hand,
can our western culture
that promotes immediateness
and having large quantities of things
influence our ability
to delay gratification?
And if so, how?
Because the ability to delay gratification
includes processes like planning, decision making,
and projecting of future events,
one of my hypotheses was
that it's connected to higher order cognitive functions,
more specifically, executive functions.
Executive functions include attention,
working memory which is a type of short term memory
that processes immediate inputs,
whether perceptual or linguistic.
So whatever you’re doing right now
and all you need for it
is stored in a working memory.
For example when you play a game
your working memory holds the rules of the game,
your next moves,
and the moves of other players.
The third executive function is inhibitory control
which is the ability to control the automatic prepotent behaviours
that can be inadequate in particular situations.
For example, when you really feel like saying something
to the person sitting next to you,
you can inhibit yourself from doing so
because you know it might disturb someone else.
It’s like at school, but now that you’re older
it should be easier for you.
Executive functions
don’t work separately.
They complement and support each other.
When you’re doing something, all of them are active.
A good example
of how executive functions work is Piaget’s test of liquid volume.
In an experiment a child is shown two beakers.
One is short and wide the other is tall and thin.
Children are supposed to point to the one
that has more liquid in it.
Children up to the age of 4
would tell you that there is more liquid
in the thin tall beaker
simply because the liquid level is higher.
The reason why they say so
is that their executive functions are not sufficiently developed yet
and they can’t hold the relevant information
in their working memory.
When, later, executive functions are sufficiently developed
they can pay attention to the relevant information;
they can hold it in their working memory,
and they can prevent
the visually prominent but incorrect information,
higher liquid levels in this case,
from influencing their response.
Executive functions are connected to the area of the prefrontal cortex.
That’s the purple one in the picture.
It's important to note
that this brain region is the slowest to develop.
That is why the functions associated with this region,
just like executive functions,
are also slow to develop.
Although the biggest developmental milestone is around the age of 4,
executive functions are not fully developed until early adulthood,
that is until approximately 21 years of age.
This might at least partially, explain the behaviour
of some teenagers that cannot wait for things
and their attention is all over the place.
After collecting data and analysing results,
we found out that executive functions influence the ability
to delay gratification, we found them to be correlated.
As I mentioned before, we also wanted to look
at the cross-cultural differences.
We found an important result:
there were no differences between the Slovak and Vanuatu children.
This means that the differences in cognitive architecture
that are sometimes presented are really just
a fabricated tool that serves certain politics.
The only difference between Slovakia and Vanuatu
was that Vanuatu was not the easiest place
to conduct certain experiments.
When I returned to my first participant
who was undergoing the marshmallow experiment,
I came back after 15 minutes and found the child
sitting in the room staring at a melted candy
that was infested by ants.
(Laughter)
This is what I flew thousands of miles to Vanuatu for.
This is also a part of an anthropologist’s work.
I needed to use my knowledge of engineering and physics
to design the environment in a way
that the marshmallows wouldn't melt.
However, considering cognitive differences: none were found.
Now that we’ve seen that there are no differences between the two cultures,
and we knewthat the executive functions
influence our ability to delay gratification,
we needed to find a way
to improve the executive functions.
Because executive functions
are a relatively well researched area in psychology,
some interventions for improving them had already been designed.
However not all interventions work.
The interventions that are supposed to improve the executive functions
cannot be too difficult for fine motor coordination.
Otherwise, children might be unsuccessful in completing these tasks
not because of their low executive function skills,
but because they lack the fine motor skills to complete the tasks.
Second condition of a successful intervention
is that they should be easily conducted
in different environments.
For example, activities that the children can do at home,
or activities that they can do at school.
When you need special tools
or special computer software,
the intervention might not be easily transferrable to different environments.
The interventions should also improve executive function skills
that are not trained directly by the intervention.
This is so, whatever a child learns during the intervention
can then be transferred to different environments,
situations and contexts.
Moreover,
the most effective interventions were found to be those
that besides executive function
also train the development of social and character traits.
This is an interesting result,
and the reason is that not only during social interactions,
but even when merely expecting social interaction,
our cognitive processing of the situation alters in a way
that we pay a lot more attention to what is happening.
Our self-control changes,
we pay more attention to what is happening.
The interventions for executive functions
that are conducted through different computer games and software
are an example of a less effective interventions.
This is because even though these games are attractive,
colourful, and tempting for children,
not every family can afford a computer.
Furthermore, these interventions are being undergone individually,
There is a difference
between individual and social interaction.
And whatever children learn during these interventions
is hard to transfer outside the context of the game.
A counterexample is Luria’s hand game.
In this game a researcher taps on the table with his hand,
and the child is also supposed to do the same.
Then the researcher taps with his finger, and the child should do the same.
Then the rules change a little and when the researcher taps
with his hand, the child is supposed to tap with his finger.
So it becomes counterintuitive.
When the researcher taps with his finger the child taps with his hand.
It is not as easy as it sounds. Not even for adults.
Anyway, you can try it at home.
So when we considered all the aforementioned results
from the previous research,
we designed interventions for improving executive function
during which we used a series of games that were previously used
for improving executive functions
but we improved them to fulfil the aforementioned conditions
that are needed for the intervention
to be effective.
These games included different songs, rhymes, colours, etc.
The children received a series of rules that were changing
and complementing with new rules, as the game progressed.
Next, we divided children into two groups:
a ritual one
and an instrumental one.
In the ritual group the games were introduced as something
that is being played this way because that's the tradition
the “proper” way.
We highlighted the ritual or conventional aspect,
So we highlighted the social aspect of the game.
On the other hand in the instrumental group,
we highlighted the practical aspects of the game.
We highlighted the utilitarian side of the social interactions.
We told the children that we were going to play a certain way so that we can,
for example, learn about colours or improve our movement.
We found out that the children who were assigned
to the ritual experimental group
reached greater improvement in executive functions.
This was because
the games they played changed their cognitive processing
in a way that they required
higher or more intensive use of executive functions.
Therefore, the executive functions were improved to a greater extent
and in turn these children have evinced
better ability to delay gratification.
In conclusion, we can say
that the intervention that would improve children’s ability to delay gratification
should look something like this.
My goal is to replicate this research
in other cultures to gain better understanding of how it works.
To conclude, I'd like to say two things.
First, maybe after all that I have said, you have a feeling
that we always and in all circumstances have to delay gratification.
This, however, is not the case.
I was not talking about delaying gratification per se,
but about the ability to delay gratification.
Which means that it is not important to delay gratification
in all circumstances,
but to have the ability to delay
when it is advantageous or beneficial.
There are often situations
when we change our behaviour and
we give up things for not quite the right reasons.
For example, society’s preference for certain body types
can lead people to various eating habits and lifestyles
that are not beneficial or even harmful.
Another good example is studying a major
just because of one's parents.
Which from a long-term perspective
can lead to a not very happy life.
Second, the research shows that social interactions are very important,
not just for children’s emotional development,
but also for their cognitive development.
So have you decided what would your choice be?
Something smaller immediately or you’d to wait for the bigger thing.
But maybe if you are a parent,
your idea would probably be that not just you,
but also your child, would be the one able to wait for the two marshmallows.
Our vision is that the interventions we designed
will become a part of school curriculums
and thus be something that children can do
every day at school or kindergarten.
That is indeed something that schools are already starting to do.
Until all of them do,
maybe we can contribute
by introducing activities
to our children’s lives that might be beneficial for them
from the long term perspective.
Don’t delay anything today,
and enjoy the rest of the day fully.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)