Preschoolers’ Motor and Verbal Self-Control Strategies During a Resistance-to-Temptation Task

Abstract

Although prior research has shown that young children exhibit enhanced self-control when they use verbal strategies provided through adult instructions, little work has examined the role of children's spontaneous verbalizations or motor behavior as strategies for enhancing self-control. The present study examined the usefulness of spontaneous verbal and motor strategies for 39 3- and 4-year-old children's ability to exercise self-control during a resistance-to-temptation task. After a 2-min play period, participants were asked by an experimenter not to touch an attractive train set while he was out of the room. Children were videotaped during the 3-min waiting period and videos were coded for frequency and duration of touches, motor movements, and verbalizations. Results indicated that self-control was improved by using both motor and verbal strategies. Children who were unable to resist touching the forbidden toy used limited motor or verbal strategies. These findings add to the growing literature demonstrating the positive role of verbalizations on cognitive control and draw attention to motor behaviors as additional strategies used by young children to exercise self-control.

The process of early self-control: an observational study in two- and three-year-olds

“…Gross (2015) describes situation selection as "taking actions that make it more or less likely that one will be in a situation that one expects will give rise to desirable or (undesirable) emotions" (p.7). In a study with three-and four-year-olds, children were sometimes observed to walk away to increase the distance between themselves and the reward (Manfra et al 2014). In fact, in this study, 61% of the children who succeeded in a 3-min delay task showed such 'moving away' behaviours, while this was only the case for 6% of the children who failed the task.…”

“…Consistent with previous findings from the early childhood literature and theoretical models which center on self-distractions and active avoidance of the reward as key to effective self-control (Duckworth et al 2016;Metcalfe and Mischel 1999), we coded whether children engaged in attention and verbal self-distractions, increased the distance between themselves and the reward, and/or made the action through which the reward could be reached more effortful. In keeping with the early childhood literature (e.g., Manfra et al 2014), we refer to these behaviours as attention, verbal, and motor behaviours from here on.…”

“…In both the classic delay of gratification task and the toddler version of this task, however, children are directly facing the attractive object in front of them during the delay time. Therefore, both tasks allow detailed coding of behaviours that children show in relation to the reward during delay (e.g., Manfra et al 2014;Peake et al 2002).…”

“…Research to date shows consistent evidence regarding the effectiveness of self-distractions for successful delay of gratification. Specifically, a range of studies has shown that children who are able to direct visual attention away from the reward are more successful on delay of gratification tasks than children who stay focused on the reward in front of them (e.g., Mischel et al 1989;Peake et al 2002, Sethi et al 2000Schlam et al 2013;Vaughn et al 1986; but see Manfra et al 2014). Furthermore, talking about something other than the reward tends to be related to task success (Vaughn et al 1986), and children who are taught to focus on a nonconsummatory aspect of the reward are more successful than children who focus on its consummatory properties ('marshmallows look like clouds' versus 'marshmallows taste yummy', respectively; Mischel and Baker 1975).…”

“…Although the ability to deploy self-control and associated delay of gratification develops during the preschool years and continues to develop for many years thereafter (Kopp 1982;Manfra et al 2014), some children as young as 2 years of age have already been observed to successfully delay gratification (Vaughn et al 1986). Given the importance of early selfcontrol and delay of gratification for a range of developmental outcomes, it is crucial to improve our understanding of how such very young children manage to exert self-control (Wilson et al 2009).…”