Don't Eat That Marshmallow! by Ellyn Davis, homes school marketplace, August 19, 2013
In
the late 1960s, Walter Mischel, a psychology professor at Columbia
University, performed a series of tests on preschoolers referred to as
"The Marshmallow Tests."
Mischel
"tested" over six hundred 4-year-olds by putting each child in a broom
closet-sized room alone with no distractions and only a child-sized
table and chair. On the table were a bell and a plastic plate.
Mischel
would place a single marshmallow on the plate, and as he did, he made
the child an offer: the little boy or girl could either eat one
marshmallow right away or could wait while he stepped out for a few
minutes, and when he returned he would bring a second marshmallow. But
they only got the second marshmallow if they hadn't eaten the first one
by the time Mischel re-entered the room. He also told the children that
if they rang the bell on the table while he was away, he would come
running back and they could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the
second.
Mischel followed these "Marshmallow Kids" for the next 18 years and made
some startling discoveries about how our ability to resist a
marshmallow as a 4 year old affects us years later.
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