Can my son resist . . . "THE MARSHMALLOW'?

This week in lecture we have focused on the concept of "delayed gratification."  To put it simply, delayed gratification is the ability to resist immediate pleasure gain in the moment with the goal of a larger reward in the future.

One of the most famous experiments to test children's ability to delay gratification is the "Marshmallow Experiments" of Walter Mischel.  In his experiments, Mischel left children alone with a marshmallow on a plate for a certain period of time.  He told the children that if they could wait and not eat the marshmallow on the plate until he came back, then they could have two marshmallows.  A video of the experiment can be seen below:

If they ate the marshmallow on their plate before the end of their time, they would only get the one.  Mischel has found the the ability to wait for the second marshmallow in early childhood (age 3-5) predicts many benefits later in life, from better academic and professional success to lower body mass.

Because my son is 5 years old, and within the age group that Mischel has frequently tested, I thought it might be fun and interesting to have him try the Marshmallow Experiment at home.

Doing the test at home, I wasn't able to completely re-create the experiment properly, but I did my best. I placed one marshmallow on a plate and had my son go into another room (not his own room full of toys) and explained the procedure to him.  I told him I was going to leave the room for a while.  He could eat the marshmallow now, if he wanted.  But, if he could wait and not eat it until I came back, he could have two marshmallows.  I then left him alone in the room with the door closed for 15 minutes, quickly checking in once at the half-way point.

Because this test has been shown to be such a big indicator of future success in life, I was a bit nervous to see the results.  Because I didn't have access to a room with a one-way viewing mirror like the one used in the experiments, I didn't know the result until I opened the door.

When I went in, the marshmallow was still on the plate, and my son seemed very pleased with himself. After he had eaten his two marshmallows, I asked my son how he was able to resist eating the marshmallow.  I was dependent on an interview with my son after the test, since I was unable to see him during the course of the experiment.

My son said that he had resisted eating the marshmallow by moving to a different location in the room and turning away from the marshmallow so he couldn't see it.  He also reported that he distracted himself by looking at other things in the room and singing a song.  These sort of techniques for avoiding temptation are referred to my Mischel as "Strategic Allocation of Attention."

In the end, it was very "gratifying" to know that my son has learned some strategies for self-control.

Self-efficacy through LEGO

While the video above provides a cute bit of LEGO animation about the attributes and attainment of self-efficacy, my own parenting experience has shown that the simple act of playing and building with LEGO toys can be a powerful tool in a child's development of self-efficacy.

My oldest child is 5 years old and he is a "LEGO Maniac," to quote a popular phrase from LEGO advertising from my childhood days.  Examining my son's development in terms of Erikson's Psychosocial Stages, he falls the 3rd stage "Initiate vs. Guilt and the 4th stage, "Industry vs. Inferiority."

An important keystone in development at the 3rd, and mainly the 4th stage is the development of self-efficacy.  This is the ability of the child to take initiative and assert themselves successfully in socially acceptable ways.  The development of self-efficacy is also a vital aspect of Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory.  In Bandura's own words:  "Persons who have a strong sense of efficacy deploy their attention and effort to the demands of the situation and are spurred by obstacles to greater effort."

• Albert Bandura (1982). "Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency". American Psychologist 37 (2): 122-147. ISSN 0003-066X.DOI:10.1037/0003-066X.37.2.122. (p. 123) (appears also in Bandura's Social Foundations of Thought and Action, 1986, p. 394)

Although there are many building toys that might make development of self-efficacy possible, there is something specific about the various products produced by LEGO that are particularly effective at facilitating this process.  Perhaps most important is the way that pre-designed LEGO sets provide opportunities for "Mastery Experiences."  The projects are coded for their age appropriateness and include very clear and precise directions that allow children to build complicated toys and structures almost completely by themselves.  To watch a child progress from a worried expression as they contemplate the complex structure on the front of the box, to intense concentration as they examine the directions and search for the correct parts, to pride as they examine their finished product is almost as fulfilling for a parent as the actual building is for the child.  

The use of LEGO as a tool for the development of self-efficacy has even spread into academic research, and even the LEGO corporation has developed it's own LEGO Learning Institute for the study of the interaction between play and learning.

The sense of mastery and self-efficacy that my son has learned from pre-designed sets is beginning to give him the confidence and inspiration to design and build his own creations.  Where once he would simply sit and stare at a pile of confusing and intimidating blocks, he now jumps right in and begins to build his own creations.

Peer Learning

As I've mentioned in previous posts, my son is currently in Kindergarten at a public charter school here in Brooklyn.  This is an incredibly exciting time for all of us.  Watching our son grow and develop intellectually and socially is a very rewarding, if slightly bittersweet, part of all of our interactions.

In contrast to my time in elementary school, when Kindergarten was only a half-day, and consisted mainly of playtime and arts & crafts, my son's Kindergarten lasts all day and has a rigorous curriculum with various assignments and homework.

My son's birthday falls in October, and according the the NYC Dept of Educations rules, he is expected to start Kindergarten when he is only four years old.  My wife and I were a bit worried how our son might develop to the more rigorous curriculum he would be facing in Kindergarten.  Although he had done well in his pre-school and seemed to have the verbal and spatial skills to handle it, we were worried that he was still to immature to display the "Concrete Operational" skills that are required of today's Kindergarten students.

The "Concrete Operational Stage" is a stage in the framework of cognitive development created by Jean Piaget.  This stage is generally considered to begin around age 6, and is a stage where children begin to develop more logical thought process, especially in relation to problems of operations and conservation.

Our worries for our son seemed to be well founded at our first parent-teacher conference when it was revealed that he was performing mostly at an average to slightly below average level.  However, within the space of a month or two we found that his academic performance began to increase by leaps and bounds.

What could have been the source for this rapid improvement?  Not by coincidence, at this same time our son had formed a close friendship with one particular classmate.  This classmate was a very high performing student who had scored very highly on Gifted and Talented exams and was reading well above his grade level.  All of a sudden, it was as if potential skills that had been lying dormant for our son were finally awoken.

Our son's rapid improvement was mainly the process of "Peer Learning," or learning that occurs amongst a cohort.  In Piaget's theory, Peer Learning works by challenging a child to reconcile his mistaken thoughts and theories about the world.  When coming into contact with other children with advanced understanding that allows them to operate more effectively in the world, a child is forced to reconsider their previous misunderstandings and develop new, more accurate ones.  Piaget termed this process sociocognitive conflict.

As our son's academic skills have advanced, he has, for the most part, achieved parity with the highest performing students of his class and has developed a separate cohort with them.  Peer learning continues to be vital to his academic progress, but its nature has now changed.  Currently, his Peer Learning experience more closely resembles the theories developed by Lev Vygotsky.  In contrast with
Piaget, Vygotsky saw cognitive development as inseparable from one's social environment.  When it came to education, Vygotsky believed that "Peer Collaboration" was most important.  Rather than being a situation of teacher-student or mentor-mentee, where information is transmitted vertically, Peer Collaboration works best when children of roughly the same levels of power and knowledge work together to solve problems and explore concepts.

However, I think it would be a mistake to see the differences between Piaget's and Vygotsky's ideas of Peer Learning as oppositional, or even stages in a sequential process.  A child's full cognitive and intellectual development seems to be a fluid and dynamic equilibrium between the sort of individual striving to overcome misunderstandings and disequilibriums as Piaget describes, and social collaboration between peers to develop new and novel understandings, as described by Vygotsky.

Thinking about thinking

Our reading for this week was on Information Processing, memory and cognition.  One specific topic which piqued my interest was the concept of "metacognition," or thinking about thinking.  The skills of metacognition develop along with many other cognitive abilities, although it seems that they sometimes lag behind children's more obvious cognitive skills (memory, reading, math and problem-solving, etc.).

Because I have a young boy aged 5 who has just started kindergarten, these theories of cognition and information processing are of tremendous importance in our household.  My son has taken to school very well and has progressed rapidly with his reading and math skills.  His rapid success has made him overconfident, however.  While he has quickly learned many words by sight, and how to sound out many others, he has little patience for words he doesn't know and doesn't yet have the metacognitive ability to understand the limitations of his new skills and watch out for common errors.  As a result, he often misses important concepts of a reading assignment or understands his readings in a way completely opposite of the text.  Studies of cognitive development have shown that this ability to recognize one's own weakness and possibilities for error, and to develop strategies to check one's work are vital to a child's academic progress.  My son has not been totally without progress in this regard, however.  After several mistakes and misunderstandings, he has learned to slow down and closely read questions containing words like "except," "do not," "least," "greatest," and other words that call for detailed and close reading.

Metacognition is not solely limited to academic matters, however.  Metacognitive ability and development is vital in many basic tasks of life, such as being able to understand someone else's motivations and thoughts, or in simply realizing that reality is not always what you see.

One of the most important researchers on this topic is John H. Flavell.  One of his more interesting studies looked at young children's ability to understand the possible difference between someone's physical appearance (whether they looked nice or attractive) and their moral behavior.    My first thought after reading about this study was, "how often does a pre-schooler in our modern society really need to try and discern a stranger's morality and good or evil intentions?"  Then it occurred to me that this process most likely occurs for the first time for most children while they are watching plays or movies or reading books.  In particular, it often seems that children's interest in this type of dramatic deception occurs alongside their abilities to realize that people are not always what they seem (around age 5-6).

For my own son, this particular metacognitive development has coincided with his fascination with Star Wars.  Along with all the action and special effects, a major theme of the Star Wars films is that things, and particularly people, aren't always what they seem.  An old hermit living out in the desert is really a Jedi master.  A handsome and elegant Galactic Senator is really an evil, scheming Sith Lord.  A tiny, elderly alien living alone in a swamp is really the most powerful Jedi in the universe.  And finally, a poor farm-boy living in obscurity in the middle of nowhere is really destined to save the galaxy.