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

Abstract

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.

Delay discounting of money and health outcomes, and adherence to policy guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Cross-cultural comparisons would be beneficial in future studies. Delay discounting may be influenced by cultural traits ( 47 ) but some of these differences may stem from economic inequalities and general financial circumstances, rather than culture-specificity ( 48 ).…”

Delayed Gratification Predicts Behavioral and Academic Outcomes: Examining the Validity of the Delay-of-Gratification Choice Paradigm in Singaporean Young Children

“…Children generally experience difficulties inhibiting their instant desires at age 3 and start to delay gratification at age 4 (Zelazo et al, 2009;Zelazo et al, 2005). For example, when children are asked to choose between a small immediate reward and a larger delayed reward, 3-year-olds typically choose the small reward that they can immediately receive, whereas 4year-olds typically choose the larger reward that they will receive after a delay, across children from Canada (e.g., Hongwanishkul et al, 2005;Lemmon & Moore, 2007;Prencipe & Zelazo, 2005;Thompson et al, 1997), Britain (Ding et al, 2021), and mainland China (Ding et al, 2021;Qu et al, 2012). Despite the cross-cultural differences in DoG, Chinese children and Western children showed similar developmental trajectories with age (Ding et al, 2021;Qu et al, 2012).…”

“…For example, when children are asked to choose between a small immediate reward and a larger delayed reward, 3-year-olds typically choose the small reward that they can immediately receive, whereas 4year-olds typically choose the larger reward that they will receive after a delay, across children from Canada (e.g., Hongwanishkul et al, 2005;Lemmon & Moore, 2007;Prencipe & Zelazo, 2005;Thompson et al, 1997), Britain (Ding et al, 2021), and mainland China (Ding et al, 2021;Qu et al, 2012). Despite the cross-cultural differences in DoG, Chinese children and Western children showed similar developmental trajectories with age (Ding et al, 2021;Qu et al, 2012). Zhao et al (2021) found that the age-related development of selfcontrol (indicated by a composite score of inhibitory control and the "delay" self-control) did not differ across selective samples of children from the U.S., China, Singapore, and Peru.…”

“…The understanding of Asian children's hot EF is still scarce. Based on the limited cross-cultural comparisons on DoG, children from Mainland China outperformed aged-matched children from Britain (Ding et al, 2021) and Canada (Qu et al, 2012). Amir and colleagues (2019) compared children's DoG across more diverse cultures and found that children from a small-scale, subsistence-based country (e.g., Shuar) were less future-oriented than children from the U.S., India, and Argentina.…”

The importance of thinking about the future in culture and cumulative cultural evolution

“…For example, Jamaican mothers projected that their offspring would sit at a younger age than English and Indian mothers expected, and the ages children met some motor stages closely matched these cultural mediated expectations [83]. This may also be the case for behaviours related to prospective cognition; Chinese children delay gratification longer than British children, possibly owing to cultural differences in parental expectations of impulse control and willpower [84]. Similarly, Carlson et al [85] found that delay-of-gratification in preschool children has increased, with children in the 2000s waiting approximately 2 min longer than children in the 1960s (irrespective of age, sex, geography and sampling effects).…”