Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Marshmallow Test Revisited

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 34 posts

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#11

Post by thejteam »

jonnathanson wrote: post #6
ghshephard wrote: post #2

Perhaps what the first study actually discovered, unbeknownst to the original researchers, is that children from homes in which the guardians are reliable turn out to be more prosperous in life. Therefore, what was actually being measured, wasn't the self control of the children, but a proxy for the reliability of the adults in their life.

While that's a tempting conclusion, it's a tough to justify. The original experiment didn't study or account for the parental variable, so it's impossible to tell what effect it may, or may not, have had "behind the scenes." 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 t…

Not to mention that there is probably a relationship between reliability and impulse control. And parents with poor impulse control tend to have children with poor impulse control(whether the relationship is genetic or learned I'll leave to others to decide). So it stands to reason that children with poor impulse control will also have parents that score low on reliability, even if the reliability in itself is not the cause.

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#12

Post by gizmo686 »

jonnathanson wrote: post #6
ghshephard wrote: post #2

Perhaps what the first study actually discovered, unbeknownst to the original researchers, is that children from homes in which the guardians are reliable turn out to be more prosperous in life. Therefore, what was actually being measured, wasn't the self control of the children, but a proxy for the reliability of the adults in their life.

While that's a tempting conclusion, it's a tough to justify. The original experiment didn't study or account for the parental variable, so it's impossible to tell what effect it may, or may not, have had "behind the scenes." 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 t…

>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.

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#13

Post by gizmo686 »

wallflower wrote: post #4

When I saw the title, I originally thought of: 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.

The more interesting part of that is that, next to engineers, kindergardeners are the best performing group at the marshmallow challenge. [1]

[1] http://marshmallowchallenge.com/TED_Talk.html

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#14

Post by gizmo686 »

kstenerud wrote: post #5

Notice what they downplay in this article: That almost half of the kids who had just been in contact with a reliable adult still ate the marshmallow. Also, were the kids allowed to keep playing with the fun art supplies while they waited? A link to the actual study would help.

In the third paragraph, "revisited" is a hyperlink to the original paper. For anyone interested, here is the URL: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeri...

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#16

Post by cbhl »

ghshephard wrote: post #2

Perhaps what the first study actually discovered, unbeknownst to the original researchers, is that children from homes in which the guardians are reliable turn out to be more prosperous in life. Therefore, what was actually being measured, wasn't the self control of the children, but a proxy for the reliability of the adults in their life.

From the actual paper: "To be clear, our data do not demonstrate that self-control is irrelevant in explaining the variance in children’s wait-times on the original marshmallow task studies. Rather, an unreliable worldview, in addition to self-control, may be causally related to later life outcomes..."

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#17

Post by hwallace »

My issue is this: I do not know at what age the ability to prioritize is developed(this may be ignorant). I feel prioritizing and weighing pros vs cons are both much more valuable than delaying gratification.

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.

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#18

Post by MattGrommes »

In watching my kids grow up I'm always struck by my inability to figure out why they did certain things. They obviously had reasons but when questioned those reasons were regularly things I would have never thought of. I always felt it was a bit like anthropomorphizing animals to make deductions about their behavior. You might think you have a good hypothesis but it's very difficult to know that you're working with the same variables they are.

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#19

Post by goldenchrome »

thejteam wrote: post #7

Whenever I meet a new kid, I mentally classify them as either a "one marshmallow child" or a "two marshmallow child" based on what I think the result woud be if they took the marshmallow test. One thing I have noticed is that there is a strong correlation between one marshmallow kids and one marshmallow parents.

The question then is then: is it a genetic predisposition or is it more behaviorally learnt?

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#20

Post by mathattack »

MattGrommes wrote: post #18

In watching my kids grow up I'm always struck by my inability to figure out why they did certain things. They obviously had reasons but when questioned those reasons were regularly things I would have never thought of. I always felt it was a bit like anthropomorphizing animals to make deductions about their behavior. You might think you have a good hypothesis but it's very difficult to know that you're working with t…

I hear you. There's always a method to the madness, but sometimes it's hard to figure out in advance.
Post reply on HN