ready set play
Learning from a 4-year-old about
DELAYED
Jean Bailey, Certified Play Expert
Gratification
O
ne of the participants’ favorite parts of ASTRA’s Certified Play Expert program is when they review the ground-breaking research conducted in the 1960s by Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford. The research is commonly referred to as the ‘marshmallow test.’ Mischel developed this test to measure a particular attribute in preschoolers — delayed gratification. Mischel and his colleagues were curious about a subject each of us struggles with daily: self-control. Ingeniously simple, Mischel and his team used a marshmallow as both a temptation and a reward. Four and fiveyear olds were seated alone in a room and given a simple proposition. The child was left alone with a single white, fluffy, sweet smelling marshmallow. They could choose to enjoy it right away or to wait a few minutes for the researcher to return. If
8
the kids waited, they received double the reward with two marshmallows. You cannot help but relate to those young children’s dilemma because it is one we live with intimately. Chocolate chip cookie, anyone? “Resisting temptation in favor of longterm goals is an essential component of social and cognitive development and of societal and economic gain,” a 2010 article on this research read in the Oxford Academic publication “Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.” When I was reviewing that research, I could not help but superimpose the experiment from the 1960s to the struggle society is having today, in 2020, dealing with a pandemic. Play can be used as a vehicle to teach kids how to regulate themselves. Play can provide kids the opportunity to develop
willpower, self-regulation, and self-control in exchange for a desired outcome, which can be as simple as winning a game, making a goal, or finishing a puzzle. What gives the marshmallow test so much relevance is that it evolved from a single research project into a four-decade life-span developmental study. Mischel continued to trace these children and correlated their original test to a pattern of outcomes as these preschoolers progressed from childhood to midlife. “In follow-up studies, preschooler’s delay ability continued to predict later outcomes in adulthood including higher educational achievement, higher sense of self-worth, better ability to cope with stress,” the Oxford article read. Mischel further enriched his findings by analyzing the successful strategies some kids used to receive the additional
November2020 • astratoy.org
2020_ASTRA_ToyTimes_04_Holiday.indd 8
11/10/20 4:07 PM
