Development
Do attachment and mind-reading help kids wait for bigger rewards?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Among 6- to 10-year-olds, children who better understood others' false beliefs, and those with more secure family attachment, were more willing to wait for a bigger reward.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Children aged 6, 8 and 10 from one Italian school completed a new candy-based intertemporal choice task, false-belief and mental-verb tasks, and a picture-based attachment measure in one individual session.
- N
- N=91 · 91 children: 30 six-year-olds, 29 eight-year-olds and 32 ten-year-olds.
- Population
- Middle-socioeconomic-status children attending a public primary school in Northern Italy, with no reported learning or social difficulties.
- Outcome
- Two intertemporal choice scores: waiting tolerance (how many days they would wait for two candies instead of one) and sensitivity to reward size (how many candies they needed to wait a week).
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Key findings
The two choice scores were strongly related (r = 0.753), and 10-year-olds were more willing to wait than 6-year-olds. For waiting tolerance, family attachment and first-order false-belief understanding were significant predictors, and once theory of mind was added age no longer contributed. For sensitivity to reward size, only first-order false-belief understanding remained a significant predictor; attachment did not predict it, and attachment to the school caregiver and second-order false belief were not useful predictors.
Methodology
The researchers devised a two-part candy task: in one part children chose between one candy now or two candies after a delay that shrank from 7 days down, and in the other they chose between one candy now or a growing number of candies after one week. Children also completed first- and second-order false-belief stories, a test of mental-state verbs, a vocabulary test, and the Separation Anxiety Test, a picture-based measure of attachment to family and to school caregivers. Correlations and hierarchical regressions tested whether age, attachment and theory of mind predicted the two choice scores.
Limitations
All measures were taken at one time point in one school, so the study shows associations, not that secure attachment or theory of mind cause better self-control, and it cannot track development within children. The candy task records a stated choice about waiting days rather than observing children actually resisting temptation, and it was newly devised for this study with no established reliability or validity. Attachment was inferred from children's stories about pictured separations rather than observed behaviour, and the authors note they measured only cognitive theory of mind and no other family factors such as parenting style.
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