Child inhibited temperament and caregiver distraction encouragement jointly predict children's delay of gratification competencies

Abstract

A cool attentional focus during the classic delay of gratification (DG) task involves shifting attention away from the emotion-arousing features and is a key mechanism that underlies children's ability to resist temptation and wait. Yet, we know relatively little about what gives rise to individual differences in cool focus in the first place. The current study (N = 162, M_age = 6.86 years) addressed this question by focusing on key aspects of child temperament (i.e., behavioral inhibition, BI) and caregiver emotion socialization (i.e., distraction encouragement) as joint predictors of cool focus. We theorized that because children are left alone in an unfamiliar environment for an undefined duration, the DG task would be especially taxing for children higher in BI, hindering their ability to deploy a cool focus and wait. We also reasoned that caregiver encouragement of distraction would serve as a protective factor by allowing children higher in BI to more easily activate a cool focus even when experiencing a taxing task. Results were partially consistent with these hypotheses, shedding new light on precursors to a central ingredient of DG ability.

Figure 1

Cool focus pertains to the delay of gratification task. Child behavioral inhibition was measured with items from The Child Behavior Questionnaire—Very Short Form. Caregiver distraction encouragement was measured with a modified version of The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale. Both behavioral inhibition and distraction encouragement were mean-centered. Predicted values are one standard deviation above and below the mean of caregiver distraction encouragement. Highly inhibited children were significantly higher in cool focus during the DG task to the degree that their caregivers encouraged distraction during everyday emotionally evocative events.