Better Working Memory and Motor Inhibition in Children Who Delayed Gratification

Influence of rhythmic-movement activity intervention on hot executive function of 5- to 6-year-old children

Hot Executive Function (hot EF) refers to cognitive process involved in high emotion or motivation, and the operation of this function is related to the activities of the ventromedial prefrontal lobe and orbitofrontal lobe. Meanwhile, rhythmic-movement activity is a musical activity in which one expresses and feels music with one's own body movements which involves cognitive abilities such as adjusting and understanding emotions among children. To explore how rhythmic-movement activity with rewards influences the development of hot EF in children of 5-6 years old, the organization principles of rhythmic-movement activity with rewards intervention on hot EF were designed, and 62 children of 5-6 years old in a kindergarten in Yantai of China were selected as research participants (M = 5.80 years old, SD = 0.37 years old) for pre-test and post-test experimental design. The experimental group received rhythmic-movement activity with rewards three times a week for 6 weeks, while the control group did not. The gift delay task and the children's gambling task were used to measure two sub-components of hot EF before and after the intervention, and the results show that rhythmic-movement activity with rewards has a significant effect on gratification delay and affective decision-making ability of children. Finally, the effects and enlightenment of rhythmic-movement activity with rewards on hot EF are discussed.

Associations between Gross and Fine Motor Skills, Physical Activity, Executive Function, and Academic Achievement: Longitudinal Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study

Accumulating evidence from behavioral studies and neuroscience suggests that motor and cognitive development are intrinsically intertwined. To explore the underlying mechanisms of this motor-cognition link, our study examined the longitudinal relationship of early motor skills and physical activity with later cognitive skills. The sample was 3188 children from the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study, followed at 9 months and 5, 7, and 11 years. Early motor skills were examined at 9 months. Children's daily physical activity level was measured using accelerometers at 7 years and a questionnaire was conducted at 11 years. Cognitive skills, including executive function and academic achievement, were measured at age 11. The results suggest that gross motor skills were positively associated with spatial working memory, whereas fine motor skills were predictive of good English and science outcomes. Moderate-to-vigorous activity was found to be negatively associated with English performance, although self-reported activity frequency was positively linked to math. Our results highlight the significant role of both gross and fine motor skills in cognitive development. This study also elucidates the limitations of using activity intensity to assess the impact of motor activity on children's cognitive development, suggesting that attention to the effects of specific types of physical activity would better elucidate the motor/cognition link.

Italian Validation of the Delaying Gratification Inventory in Adolescents

The delay of gratification (DoG) is defined as the willingness to forego immediate satisfaction to achieve greater long-term gratification. This ability is essential in adolescence, as its development is crucial against desirable versus undesirable behaviors. This study investigated the psychometric proprieties of the Delaying Gratification Inventory (DGI) in Italian adolescents. A total of 621 Italian adolescents, ranging from 14 to 17 years old (M = 15.92, SD = 1.05; 47.7% boys), participated in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis identified a four-factor structure (delay of gratification concerning Food, Social Interaction, Money, and Achievement). The reliability of the Italian DGI was acceptable. Measurement invariance across gender was supported. Boys reached a higher DoG score in the Food subscale and a lower score in the Social Interaction and Achievement subscales than girls. Moreover, the Italian DGI dimensions were all positively correlated with self-control and prosocial behavior. Except for the Social Interaction subscale, positive correlations were found between the Food, Money, and Achievement subscales and self-esteem. The present findings suggest that the Italian DGI could be used for assessing DoG ability, a key regulatory ability that promotes healthy behaviors in adolescence.

Temporal expectations in delay of gratification

We examined how temporal expectations influence preference reversals in a delay of gratification task for rats based on a hypothesis of Rachlin (2000), who suggested that preference for a larger-later reward may shift in favor of a smaller-immediate reward as a result of changes in when that larger reward is expected. To explore Rachlin's hypothesis, we preexposed two groups of rats to the delays associated with a larger-later reinforcer from a delay of gratification task. One group experienced the delays as a function of their choices in an intertemporal choice task and the other group experienced delays yoked from the first group (independent of their behavior) in an exposure training procedure. In addition, we included a third group of rats that were not exposed to delays during preexposure training as a comparison to the other two groups. Overall, the two groups of rats that experienced delays during preexposure training tended to make fewer defection responses than the comparison group during the delay of gratification task. Consistent with Rachlin's hypothesis, our results suggest that temporal learning may influence preference reversals in a delay of gratification task, providing a number of future directions for research in this area.

Testing delay of gratification in rats using a within-session increasing-delay task

In delay discounting, preference reversals refer to shifts in preference from a larger-later reward to a smaller-sooner reward. Steep hyperbolic discounting predicts a preference reversal when a smaller-sooner and larger-later reward both become temporally proximal; prior research is consistent with this prediction. Hyperbolic discounting does not predict a preference reversal, however, after an individual chooses a larger-later reward over a smaller-immediate reward; prior research is inconsistent with this prediction. We sought to replicate and extend these findings using a delay of gratification task in rats. The task included a defection response which allowed rats to reverse their preference after choosing a larger-later sucrose reinforcer to instead obtain a smaller-immediate sucrose reinforcer. In Experiment 1, we found that rats would defect on their choice of the larger-later reinforcer, systematically replicating prior research. We also found that experience on the delay of gratification task led to decreases in defection responses. In Experiment 2, we found that prior experience on an intertemporal choice task, with no opportunity to defect, also led to few defection responses on the delay of gratification task. We discuss our findings in the context of whether inhibitory control or temporal learning could be involved in delay of gratification.

Waiting for the better reward: Comparison of delay of gratification in young children across two cultures

Delay of gratification-a form of self-control-is the ability to forsake immediately available rewards in order to obtain larger-valued outcomes in future, which develops throughout the pre-school years. The majority of previous research in this area has been conducted with Western populations, therefore knowledge of Eastern children's performance is scarcer. Here, utilising on a recently published dataset of British children (n = 61), we further tested delay of gratification in 3 to 5-year-old Chinese children (n = 75) using Bramlett et al.'s (2012) delay choice paradigm. The paradigm was previously used in non-human primates and it featured a mechanized rotating tray that sequentially moves rewards within reach. Additionally, we administered 3 inhibitory control tasks and 1 standardised delay choice task to Chinese pre-schoolers (British children were not tested). We aimed to investigate the influence of culture, reward type and reward visibility on pre-schoolers' ability to delay gratification. We found significant age-related improvements in delay of gratification ability in both countries and children performed better when presented with rewards varying in quality than quantity. Consistent with previous cross-cultural literature, Chinese children showed better overall performance than their British peers when reward visibility was manipulated (though reward visibility itself had no significant effect on performance). There were significant correlations in Chinese children's performance in Bramlett et al.'s (2012) delay choice paradigm and performance in some (though not all tested) inhibitory control tasks. We discuss these results in relation to task demands and the broader social orientation of self-control. We concluded that the intuitive comparative assessment of self-control task taps into children's delay of gratification ability. Our results emphasize the importance of testing for socio-cultural influences on children's cognitive development.

Inhibitory Dimensions and Delay of Gratification: A Comparative Study on Individuals with Down Syndrome and Typically Developing Children

While previous research on inhibition in people with Down syndrome (DS) reported contradictory results, with no explicit theoretical model, on the other hand, a more homogeneous impaired profile on the delay of gratification skills emerged. The main goal of the present study was to investigate response inhibition, interference suppression, and delay of gratification in 51 individuals with DS matched for a measure of mental age (MA) with 71 typically developing (TD) children. Moreover, we cross-sectionally explored the strengths and weaknesses of these components in children and adolescents vs. adults with DS with the same MA. A battery of laboratory tasks tapping on inhibitory sub-components and delay of gratification was administrated. Results indicated that individuals with DS showed an overall worse performance compared to TD children on response inhibition and delay of gratification, while no differences emerged between the two samples on the interference suppression. Additionally, our results suggested that older individuals with DS outperformed the younger ones both in response inhibition and in the delay of gratification, whereas the interference suppression still remains impaired in adulthood. This study highlights the importance of evaluating inhibitory sub-components considering both MA and chronological age in order to promote more effective and evidence-based training for this population.

Common mechanisms of executive attention underlie executive function and effortful control in children

Executive Function (EF) and Effortful Control (EC) have traditionally been viewed as distinct constructs related to cognition and temperament during development. More recently, EF and EC have been implicated in top-down self-regulation - the goal-directed control of cognition, emotion, and behavior. We propose that executive attention, a limited-capacity attentional resource subserving goal-directed cognition and behavior, is the common cognitive mechanism underlying the self-regulatory capacities captured by EF and EC. We addressed three related questions: (a) Do behavioral ratings of EF and EC represent the same self-regulation construct? (b) Is this self-regulation construct explained by a common executive attention factor as measured by performance on cognitive tasks? and (c) Does the executive attention factor explain additional variance in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) problems to behavioral ratings of self-regulation? Measures of performance on complex span, general intelligence, and response inhibition tasks were obtained from 136 preadolescent children (M = 11 years, 10 months, SD = 8 months), along with self- and parent-reported EC, and parent-reported EF, and ADHD problems. Results from structural equation modeling demonstrated that behavioral ratings of EF and EC measured the same self-regulation construct. Cognitive tasks measured a common executive attention factor that significantly explained 30% of the variance in behavioral ratings of self-regulation. Executive attention failed to significantly explain additional variance in ADHD problems beyond that explained by behavioral ratings of self-regulation. These findings raise questions about the utility of task-based cognitive measures in research and clinical assessment of self-regulation and psychopathology in developmental samples.

Acute stress impairs children's sustained attention with increased vulnerability for children of mothers reporting higher parenting stress

Despite evidence that acute stress impairs attention in adults, there has been minimal research in children. Here, the effects of acute stress on Go/No-go performance were examined in young children (M age = 5.41 years). Given the critical role of the parent-child relationship to children's self-regulatory development, the extent to which parenting stress predicts children's cognitive vulnerability to acute stress and autonomic reactivity was also investigated. A between-groups design (n = 58 stress, n = 26 control) was used with oversampling of the stressor-exposed children to examine individual differences. The Parenting Stress Index and subscales were employed as a measure of parenting stress. Acute stress impaired children's sustained attention, but not inhibitory control. Higher parenting stress was associated with vulnerability to attentional impairment. Parenting distress was also positively associated with sympathetic reactivity to acute stress, but neither sympathetic nor parasympathetic reactivity was associated with attentional impairment. A conceptual model of pathways through which repetitive acute stress may contribute to self-regulatory difficulties is presented, including the potential buffering role of caregivers.

Experiencing regret about a choice helps children learn to delay gratification

Children (6- and 7-year-olds) decided whether to wait for a short delay to win a prize or for a longer period to win a different prize. Those who chose to take their prize after a short delay won two candies but were shown that they would have won four candies if they had waited longer. We measured whether children regretted their choice not to wait. The next day, children were faced with the same choice again. Children who regretted choosing the short delay on Day 1 were more likely to delay gratification on Day 2 than children who had not regretted their previous choice. In a second study, we replicated this finding while controlling for intellectual ability and children's preference for four candies over two candies. This suggests that experiencing regret about a choice not to wait assists children in delaying gratification when faced with the same choice again.