A child is staring longingly at a bowl of chocolate ice cream directly in front of her. She's听told to wait for 10 seconds and she won鈥檛 want it anymore. The urge for sweets will dissipate.
Does it work?
Probably not. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have found that it鈥檚 not being asked to wait that curbs impulse control but rather reminders about what to do that hold the key. The听听are published in听a recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the听Association for Psychological Science.
鈥淧rior work has found that making children wait improved their inhibitory control, but children in those studies were also given reminders about controlling impulses,鈥� said lead author Jane Barker, a graduate student in CU-Boulder鈥檚 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. 鈥淪o we set out to test what really helped kids 鈥� just letting time pass, or getting reminders.鈥�
The difference may seem subtle to the person who wants nothing more than to gobble down that bowl of ice cream, but the research could prove important to teachers and parents frustrated by their children鈥檚 impulsive behavior. After all, a cornerstone of academic success is the ability to stay focused versus acting out of impulse or habit.
For the study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, Barker and Professor Yuko Munakata, also of CU-Boulder鈥檚 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, enrolled 150 3-year-olds in collaboration with the Children鈥檚 Museum of Denver. Two-thirds of the subjects were tested at CU-Boulder; one-third at the museum.
The tots were asked to play a game involving boxes and cute animal stickers.
They were told that the boxes with blue squares on top contained stickers while the boxes with red triangles on top did not. The object of the game was to reach for and open boxes that contained stickers. 听The children were told not to open the empty boxes.
The children were allowed to reach toward a box either immediately or after a delay and were either reminded of goal-relevant information through verbal or physical reminders or were not reminded of the object of the game at all.
鈥淲e were surprised that adding simple reminders to the task - like quickly tapping the visual cue when children saw the box - was so effective in helping children to avoid opening boxes they shouldn鈥檛,鈥� Barker said.
鈥淥ur work may help to explain why asking children to delay without providing them with reminders about what they should do (for example, 鈥榮top and count to 10 before acting!鈥�) is not always an effective impulse control strategy.鈥�
Given the findings, future interventions could involve training people to look for tangible cues that remind them of what they should do, or encouraging them to set up situations where cues are always present.
Interestingly, when a delay was imposed by the child 鈥� not the researcher 鈥� it seemed to help the child open the right box. In other words, the passage of time may be a symptom rather than a cause of inhibitory control. 鈥淐hildren can take time to think, but giving them time does not guarantee that they will think,鈥� the researchers wrote.
The researchers would now like to probe what aspects of the intervention improved children鈥檚 performance. For example, they think that reminding children of what they should do in the moment is probably more important than reminding them of the rules at the beginning of the task. They also want to determine whether the findings hold up for people at different ages.
鈥淲e are curious about how kids become more self-directed across time,鈥� Barker said. 鈥淲e are really interested in how those cues 鈥� or reminders 鈥� become internalized in kids. What strategies support self-directed behavior in childhood?鈥�
Until then, while waiting a few seconds might not prevent you or your child from eating that bowl of ice cream, Googling the calorie count (if you happen to be trying to lose weight) or reminding your child a few more times throughout the day she can鈥檛 eat it because of her听pending soccer game, just might.
Contact:
Jane Barker, jane.barker@colorado.edu
Julie Poppen, CU-Boulder media relations, (O) 303-492-4007, (M) 720-503-4922
julie.poppen@colorado.edu
