The Marshmallow Test Revisited
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It's entirely possible that the reliability of adults is a factor in developing a child's impulse control. It's also possible that it's a significant factor. But we'd have to design experiments to study its significance. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the variable being studied in the original experiment, impulse control, was actually just a red herring disguising parental reliability as the true factor.
The variable being studied was weather or not the children would wait for the second marshmallow, and that the children who did wait did better in life. I suspect that everyone would agree that this is not an casual relationship, which would imply that the children did better because they waited for the marshmallow. Therefore, we know that we are looking for what factor(s) lead to the correlation between waiting and success in life. In the original experiment it was assumed, I believe without justification, that the common cause was impulse control. This experiment shows that the trustworthiness of the environment plays a significant role in determining how the children make their decision. This result support the hypothesis that the original marshmallow experiment was a proxy for the living environment of the children, not their impulse control. I'll leave it up to researchers to determine how to answer the question of what is going on behind the scenes, however I think the take home message for the rest of us is that experiments and statistics only prove exactly what was being looked at, and any conclusion we draw from that is interperatation that is subject to human error.
No, the experiment shows that the trustworthiness of the person establishing the immediate challenge plays a significant role in the outcome. It's a huge leap to go from that relatively mundane finding, to the conclusion that the randomly selected participants in the original study were biased in a systematic way toward mistrust of adults.
"This result support the hypothesis that the original marshmallow experiment was a proxy for the living environment of the children, not their impulse control."
It provides only extremely weak support for that hypothesis. A reasonable prior expectation is that it is unlikely for a randomly selected group of young children to share a mistrust of adults that would carry on throughout their lives.
I think you misunderstand gizmo686's point. My reading (of gizmo686's post as well as the study) is that this is not about a question of merely the individual child's responses but also about their environment, which at the age of 3 is going to be primarily controlled by their parents. It's not just a matter of whether a child who grows up mistrusting the world is at a disadvantage. It's more that a child who grows up in a world that is untrustworthy is at a disadvantage.
Let me be blunt, we are talking about shitty parents. Or, to tone it down one notch, less capable parents. On the one hand you have parents who can provide for their children, who are attentive to their needs, etc. Those parents will tend to raise children better, and will tend to raise children who grow up to be more successful. On the other hand you have parents who let their children down often, are unable to provide for them as well, make promises that go unfulfilled, etc. Those parents will tend to raise children less well, and will tend to raise children who grow up and have more problems in life, problems finding jobs, problems with law enforcement, problems with relationships, etc.
In broad strokes this is essentially what the second experiment is trying to show that the first experiment is testing. By intentionally priming children to either be trusting or untrusting of their immediate environment and of adults they show that they can control the outcome of the marshmallow experiment. And that in turn leads to the argument that perhaps it is a similar degree of priming (through the ongoing experiences with their family) and the underlying level of trust for adults that is being tested in the first experiment.
It's not an ironclad experiment but it's an interesting hypothesis, certainly, and at the very least it unravels some of the overly simplistic interpretations of the first marshmallow experiment.
I would add that it's possible that the two marshmallow experiments have very little to do with each other besides using children and marshmallows to perform. Further study is needed to make further conclusions.
For example, we might be tempted to try to combine the results and say something like "kids who trust and respect authority do better in life as adults." But this is not what the study/studies measured, and while this study may inspire interesting hypotheses for future work, that work needs to be performed before we can make conclusions.
Fortunately its not clear the effect is long-lasting. Small children have the attention span of a fish.
What is often ignored is that rational decision making depends on priorities and estimations of prior probability, and these vary wildly based on circumstance.
PS: Will be good if such article writers link to the paper, or at least the abstract.
http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Welcome.html
I think the above is a more interesting challenge. Particularly because there is a magical point where the kids or even adults realize that they just have to start playing with the spaghetti - can't just stare at it.
Which was actually the first time I had heard of this test.
Maybe I'm reaching.
My Sister took her youngest to an experiment where, in the waiting room they put the kid in a room with toys on a table, and took her to 'do paperwork'. The boy was told to leave the toys alone.
Really she went to the observation room. They simply timed how long it took for the bored child to play with the toys.
See, by testing the child 'before the test started' they avoided pre-loading the kid. They changed-up the test by having other kids and adults enter the room and play with the toys, or repeat the admonition, or whatever.
The
I am not a young child, anymore, but I could imagine a child (me) taking the marshmallow that is sitting in front of me, because maybe I'd rather have a marshmallow now, and waiting 15 minutes is just too long for a second marshmallow. Maybe I'm wrong and I was just a kid who didn't think about candy all the time.
My point is even when I was really young, I still may value my time (not consciously), and would rather go play with legos and have a marshmallow, than spend my time concentrating on getting a second.
It was hyperlinked in the 3rd paragraph.
Also, were the kids allowed to keep playing with the fun art supplies while they waited?
A link to the actual study would help.