There's a lot of things the marshmallow test might signal, but most kids probably aren't spending a lot of time performing cost benefit analysis when faced with the problem. I wouldn't doubt that kids with trust issues would tend to do worse. Certainly the ones with behavioral/executive function/developmental issues do worse than others.

Kids are pretty used to calculations related to stuff to eat.

I think anyone who grew up with siblings has an extremely developed sense of how much they're willing to risk vs how much reward. Like would I eat my brother's pudding knowing we'll be fighting to death when he's also back from school ? Yes, of course. That's risk/reward that made sense back in the days.

Exactly, it's nonsense to talk about "executive function" as if it's some internal liquid that some kids have and others don't. Kids adapt to the realities of their situation, if they feel - on an intellectual level, or maybe on a more instinctive level - that things are precarious and options you have today won't be there tomorrow, and promises made to you won't necessarily be kept, of course you eat the goddamn marshmallow.

> it's nonsense to talk about "executive function" as if it's some internal liquid that some kids have.

That's actually how people with executive function disorders (like ADHD) describe it. There's a finite amount of gas/fuel/internal liquid they have in a day, which gets consumed as demands are made of them and it runs out a lot sooner for them than it does for others. Once it's gone even simple tasks can be overwhelming. Taking that one step further is the "spoon theory" (https://neurodivergentinsights.com/blog/the-neurodivergent-s...) which divides that finite resource into categories like mental, emotional, physical, social, etc.

As somebody with ADHD going on, the metaphor I've seen that I like best is to imagine that you have to do absolutely everything while bringing along a giant husky on a leash. Even when it's cooperative it's a source of friction; when it isn't, you're trying to drag it along just to be in a place to complete basic tasks.

Whenever my sister and I had to share a single food item, like a brownie. Our mom would have one of us cut the item in half, and the other would get to pick their half first. Deciding which half was never a casual assessment.

Speak for yourself. The kids I know are modeling the future interest rates on marshmallows.

Toddler scribbles are in fact marshmallow yield curves.

You have a lot of people that take that last fact and then assume the converse.

But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.

> But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.

You've repeated the whole thesis from the article: people are conditioned for delayed gratification if that is possible/predictable, and then asserts that parents have the influence to develop that trait in kids by fostering predictability.

To further complicate things, kids in poor households tend to have more behavioral/executive function/developmental issues. It's still worth pointing out that just failing the marshmallow test shouldn't cause someone to assume anything.

You're right. Although it can hint at the possibility of those types of problems, the marshmallow test shouldn't be used to make those kinds of assumptions, especially in isolation. Like I said, it can signal a lot of very different things (even hunger).

"Poor" isn't needed here. If the kid has siblings, or the family has an "opportunistic" dog, or the kid has spent time in a daycare where treats are sometimes grabbed, or ...

Or the kid is getting bored by the stupid researcher and her stupid test, and is trying to get it over with as fast as he can.

> kids with trust issues would tend to do worse

They don't do worse in the household they live in. They do better because if they waited for the 2nd marshmallow at home then they would end up with nothing.

Better with one bird in the hand right now than waiting for two empty promises.

So many of these psychological tests are based on values in upper-middle-class families. They are not always valid when the parents are drug users or alcoholic.

Kids of alcoholic parents know that most promises are empty promises. You are a fool if you take a "we will go to Disneyland on saturday" promise seriously.

Yeah. Just the wording "trust issues" makes it sound like the issue is with the kid. When in reality it is possible that they have a well grounded, rational, and evidence based belief that adults tend to not fulfil their promises. Exactly as you say.

A marshmallow in the hand is worth two in the bush

If you abstain from marshmallows for 40 years, I'll give you 1000 marshmallows.

Historic returns is no promise of future returns. Terms and conditions apply.

The marshmallow test is interesting. Rather than measuring mainly self control, it might be measure more or less only trust.

It could be a test of which you prefer: an actual-marshmallow or a dream-marshmallow.

It's only natural to prefer the first but I think we can be trained to prefer the second.

Marshmallows in hand have diminishing returns as well. The difference between having 0 marshmallows and 1 marshmallow is much larger than the difference between having 1 and 2, or 2 and 3.

This is the way

Like most everything else in social psychology, the Marshmallow Test is (largely) bullshit [0].

[0] "Delay of gratification and adult outcomes: The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning" https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.14...

Don't fault social psychologists for what pop culture does with what they wrote. Even author of the marshmallow test experiment is arguing against this simplistic interpretation of it.

One of the criticisms of the test is that children who fail it are more likely to have parents who regularly fail to deliver on their promises. From that perspective it doesn’t make sense to wait.

> time-value-of-marshmallow

Bravo! Love that phrase. Some freakonomics shit happening there...

Yes! I personally find marshmallows underwhelming. If you gave me one or two I might eat them. But if the choice is between “eat one now and you’re free to go do whatever you want” or “stay locked alone in this room for a quarter of an hour and you get two”, the latter is a worse proposition.

I’m perfectly content with being with my own thoughts for hours, but being forced to do nothing for a crummy reward when a better alternative is right there is not compelling.

Are you a child between the ages of 3 and 5? Because that's the typical age of a participant in the marshmallow test. This is like scoffing a kid not finding something on Dora the Explorer.

I’m not criticising the kids, I’m criticising the conclusions of the experiment. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to explain my reasoning this clearly or perhaps even consciously understood why I had made that choice, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have been able to intuitively make that tradeoff. Which is precisely the point of the article: kids subconsciously performing an action based on psychological and environmental factors not fully within their grasp.

Within the parameters of your analogy, my point is closer to scoffing at the experimenters for making sweeping conclusions based on kids being able to find a single item on Dora the Explorer. Sure, maybe the kids who failed to find it had a learning disability, or maybe they weren’t that stimulated by being forced to watch a show they disliked when they could just go play something else. Even with the conclusions having been drawn years later, where the finders performed better academically, that could still indicate the non-finders were simply uninterested in the way most schools work by forcing you to be there and listen to certain subjects at certain times. Perhaps they would’ve thrived in a freer environment where they had greater freedom to pick the subjects for each day.

Youre locked in the room either way.

Marshmallow test has been debunked by a recent 2021 study [0].

[0]: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmal...