What’s this – children showing self-control? | Vanessa Thorpe
The innocuous-sounding "marshmallow test", many will remember, is the beguiling name given to an established experiment that serves to separate those children who can control their primal urges from those who cannot. Given the choice of confectionery now or a double helping a bit later, the child with a greater chance of success in future life will wait for longer. As such, it is a test that has always carried a pretty gloomy, though sugar-coated, message about our pre-determined fates.
But now this way of measuring young children's behaviour, used as an index by scientists for 50 years, is offering a cause for celebration. It seems that, contrary to common wisdom, girls and boys are getting better at mastering their immediate impulses. Research released last week by John Protzko, a psychologist at the University of California, showed that across all levels of ability children can now hold out for several minutes longer.
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