Cultures Crossing: The Power of Habit in Delaying Gratification.

Resisting immediate temptations in favor of larger later rewards predicts academic success, socioemotional competence, and health. These links with delaying gratification appear from early childhood and have been explained by cognitive and social factors that help override tendencies toward immediate gratification. However, some tendencies may actually promote delaying gratification. We assessed children's delaying gratification for different rewards across two cultures that differ in customs around waiting. Consistent with our preregistered prediction, results showed that children in Japan (n = 80) delayed gratification longer for food than for gifts, whereas children in the United States (n = 58) delayed longer for gifts than for food. This interaction may reflect cultural differences: Waiting to eat is emphasized more in Japan than in the United States, whereas waiting to open gifts is emphasized more in the United States than in Japan. These findings suggest that culturally specific habits support delaying gratification, providing a new way to understand why individuals delay gratification and why this behavior predicts life success.

Does Prior Night's Sleep Impact Next Day's Executive Functioning? It Depends on an Individual's Average Sleep Quality.

Executive functioning (EF) is a series of fundamental goal-directed cognitive abilities that enable effective learning. Differences in daily sleep quality may covary with fluctuations in EF among youth. Most studies linking sleep to EF rely on between-person differences and average effects for the sample. This study employed an intensive longitudinal design and examined the within-person relations between self-reported prior night's sleep quality and next day's EF. Students from Grades 4 to 12 (M age= 14.60, SD = 2.53) completed three behavioral EF tasks repeatedly across approximately one semester. The final analytic sample included 2898 observations embedded in 73 participants. Although, on average, sleep did not significantly covary with EF, there was heterogeneity in within-person sleep-EF relations. Moreover, individuals' average sleep quality moderated within-person effects. For individuals with low mean sleep quality, a better-than-usual sleep quality was linked to better EF performance. However, for individuals with high mean sleep quality, better-than-usual sleep quality was linked to worse EF performance. Understanding person-specific relations between sleep and EF can help educators optimize EF and learning on a daily basis and produce positive academic outcomes across longer time periods.

A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Interventions to Decrease Cyberbullying Perpetration and Victimization.

Evidence suggests that cyberbullying among school-age children is related to problem behaviors and other adverse school performance constructs. As a result, numerous school-based programs have been developed and implemented to decrease cyberbullying perpetration and victimization. Given the extensive literature and variation in program effectiveness, we conducted a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of programs to decrease cyberbullying perpetration and victimization. Our review included published and unpublished literature, utilized modern, transparent, and reproducible methods, and examined confirmatory and exploratory moderating factors. A total of 50 studies and 320 effect sizes spanning 45,371 participants met the review protocol criteria. Results indicated that programs significantly reduced cyberbullying perpetration (g = -0.18, SE = 0.05, 95% CI [-0.28, -0.09]) and victimization (g = -0.13, SE = 0.04, 95% CI [-0.21, -0.05]). Moderator analyses, however, yielded only a few statistically significant findings. We interpret these findings and provide implications for future cyberbullying prevention policy and practice.

The Role of Clearinghouses in Promoting Transparent Research: A Methodological Study of Transparency Practices for Preventive Interventions.

Transparency of research methods is vital to science, though incentives are variable, with only some journals and funders adopting transparency policies. Clearinghouses are also important stakeholders; however, to date none have implemented formal procedures that facilitate transparent research. Using data from the longest standing clearinghouse, we examine transparency practices for preventive interventions to explore the role of online clearinghouses in incentivizing researchers to make their research more transparent. We conducted a descriptive analysis of 88 evaluation reports reviewed in 2018-2019 by Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, when the clearinghouse began checking for trial registrations, and expanded on these efforts by applying broader transparency standards to interventions eligible for an endorsement on the Blueprints website during the study period. Reports were recent, with 84% published between 2010 and 2019. We found that few reports had data, code, or research materials that were publicly available. Meanwhile, 40% had protocols that were registered, but only 8% were registered prospectively, while one-quarter were registered before conducting analyses. About one-third included details in a registered protocol describing the treatment contrast and planned inclusions, and less than 5% had a registered statistical analysis plan (e.g., planned analytical methods, pre-specified covariates). Confirmatory research was distinguished from exploratory work in roughly 40% of reports. Reports published more recently (after 2015) had higher rates of transparency. Preventive intervention research needs to be more transparent. Since clearinghouses rely on robust findings to make well-informed decisions and researchers are incentivized to meet clearinghouse standards, clearinghouses should consider policies that encourage transparency to improve the credibility of evidence-based interventions.

Intraindividual Fluctuations in Sleep Predict Subsequent Goal Setting in Adolescents.

The purpose of this study was to investigate within- and between-person associations between sleep and subsequent goal setting in adolescents. We conducted an intensive repeated measures longitudinal study to assess intra- and inter-individual associations between sleep and goal setting and potential moderators of such associations. Thirty-nine seventh through 12th graders reported on their sleep quality and propensity to set goals in their daily lives several times per week for approximately four months. We used a combination of multilevel modeling with time-varying covariates and centering techniques to partition within- and between-person variance. We found significant and positive associations between sleep and goal setting within individuals, but no such associations between individuals. That is, students were more likely to set goals for their work after getting a good night's sleep relative to their own average sleep quality, but getting good sleep on average relative to other individuals showed no association with average goal setting. These relationships were not moderated by participant age, gender, or sociodemographic status as indexed by maternal education. Differences in average sleep between adolescents matters less for their propensity to set goals than whether they experienced better- or worse-than-usual sleep the previous night given their own average. This finding represents the first evidence documenting effects of sleep on goal setting, which is an important psychological precursor to many youth behavioral and achievement outcomes. Our findings highlight the individuality of sleep needs and point to new directions for sleep-related practice and policy aimed at youth.

Same Data Set, Different Conclusions: Preschool Delay of Gratification Predicts Later Behavioral Outcomes in a Preregistered Study.

One simple marshmallow test in preschool children predicts an array of important life outcomes, according to multiple studies spanning several decades. However, a recent conceptual replication casts doubt on these famous findings. We conducted an independent, preregistered secondary analysis to test whether previously observed longitudinal associations between preschool delay of gratification and adolescent outcomes would be conceptually replicated. Associations were significant for three of the five outcomes we tested using the analytic approach employed in the original studies of the marshmallow test. Relationships between delay of gratification and problem behavior held in bivariate, multivariate, and multilevel models; in contrast, no significant relationships between delay and problem behavior were found in the other recent replication, even though both studies used the same data set. These relationships were better explained by social support than by self-control, suggesting that the marshmallow test is predictive because it reflects aspects of a child's early environment that are important over the long term. This novel interpretation of the classic findings points to new directions for intervention.

Lower general executive function is primarily associated with trait worry: A latent variable analysis of negative thought/affect measures.

This exploratory latent-variable study sought to identify common sources of variance between two multifaceted sets of constructs: executive functions (EFs) and negative thoughts/affect. One-hundred ninety-two college students completed nine tasks representing three types of EFs (inhibition, updating, and shifting) and a set of questionnaires assessing four facets of negative thought/affect (anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, worry, and rumination). Results indicated that, although the four negative thought/affect constructs were substantially correlated with one another, trait worry was the construct uniquely associated with EFs. Specifically, worry was associated with general EF abilities underlying all three subtypes of EFs (common EF), but was not associated with specific EF abilities (i.e., shifting-specific and updating-specific). These findings highlight the importance of partitioning common and specific variances in both EFs and negative thought/affect when examining the associations between these two research domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Getting ready to use control: Advances in the measurement of young children's use of proactive control.

A key developmental transition in executive function is in the temporal dynamics of its engagement: children shift from reactively calling to mind task-relevant information as needed, to being able to proactively maintain information across time in anticipation of upcoming demands. This transition is important for understanding individual differences and developmental changes in executive function; however, methods targeting its assessment are limited. We tested the possibility that Track-It, a paradigm developed to measure selective sustained attention, also indexes proactive control. In this task children must track a target shape as it moves unpredictably among moving distractors, and identify where it disappears, which may require proactively maintaining information about the target or goal. In two experiments (5-6 year-olds, Ns = 33, 64), children's performance on Track-It predicted proactive control across two established paradigms. These findings suggest Track-It measures proactive control in children. Theoretical possibilities regarding how proactive control and selective sustained attention may be related are also discussed.

Beyond personal control: The role of developing self-control abilities in the behavioral constellation of deprivation.

We agree with Pepper & Nettle that personal control is important in understanding people's willingness to engage in future-oriented behavior. However, this does not imply that self-control abilities play no role, for self-control abilities do influence whether individuals engage in future-oriented behavior. Personal control may also shape the development of self-control abilities, so contrasting the two may be a false dichotomy.

No Evidence of the Ego-Depletion Effect across Task Characteristics and Individual Differences: A Pre-Registered Study.

Ego-depletion, a psychological phenomenon in which participants are less able to engage in self-control after prior exertion of self-control, has become widely popular in the scientific community as well as in the media. However, considerable debate exists among researchers as to the nature of the ego-depletion effect, and growing evidence suggests the effect may not be as strong or robust as the extant literature suggests. We examined the robustness of the ego-depletion effect and aimed to maximize the likelihood of detecting the effect by using one of the most widely used depletion tasks (video-viewing attention control task) and by considering task characteristics and individual differences that potentially moderate the effect. We also sought to make our research plan transparent by pre-registering our hypotheses, procedure, and planned analyses prior to data collection. Contrary to the ego-depletion hypothesis, participants in the depletion condition did not perform worse than control participants on the subsequent self-control task, even after considering moderator variables. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting ego-depletion is not a reliable phenomenon, though more research is needed that uses large sample sizes, considers moderator variables, and pre-registers prior to data collection.

Trust matters: Seeing how an adult treats another person influences preschoolers' willingness to delay gratification.

Holding out for a delayed reward in the face of temptation is notoriously difficult, and the ability to do so in childhood predicts diverse indices of life success. Prominent explanations focus on the importance of cognitive control. However, delaying gratification may also require trust in people delivering future rewards as promised. Only limited experimental work has tested this idea, and such studies with children were focused on general reward expectations, so evidence was ambiguous as to whether social trust played a role. The present study provides the first targeted test of a role for social trust in children's willingness to delay gratification. Children observed an adult behave in either a trustworthy or untrustworthy manner toward another adult, then were tested in the classic delay of gratification task by that adult. Children were less likely to wait the full delay period, and waited less time overall, for a reward promised by an untrustworthy adult, relative to children tested by a trustworthy adult. These findings demonstrate that manipulations of social trust influence delaying gratification, and highlight intriguing alternative reasons to test for individual differences in delaying gratification and associated life outcomes.

Less-structured time in children's daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning.

Executive functions (EFs) in childhood predict important life outcomes. Thus, there is great interest in attempts to improve EFs early in life. Many interventions are led by trained adults, including structured training activities in the lab, and less-structured activities implemented in schools. Such programs have yielded gains in children's externally-driven executive functioning, where they are instructed on what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. However, it is less clear how children's experiences relate to their development of self-directed executive functioning, where they must determine on their own what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. We hypothesized that time spent in less-structured activities would give children opportunities to practice self-directed executive functioning, and lead to benefits. To investigate this possibility, we collected information from parents about their 6-7 year-old children's daily, annual, and typical schedules. We categorized children's activities as "structured" or "less-structured" based on categorization schemes from prior studies on child leisure time use. We assessed children's self-directed executive functioning using a well-established verbal fluency task, in which children generate members of a category and can decide on their own when to switch from one subcategory to another. The more time that children spent in less-structured activities, the better their self-directed executive functioning. The opposite was true of structured activities, which predicted poorer self-directed executive functioning. These relationships were robust (holding across increasingly strict classifications of structured and less-structured time) and specific (time use did not predict externally-driven executive functioning). We discuss implications, caveats, and ways in which potential interpretations can be distinguished in future work, to advance an understanding of this fundamental aspect of growing up.

Delaying gratification depends on social trust.

Delaying gratification is hard, yet predictive of important life outcomes, such as academic achievement and physical health. Prominent theories focus on the role of self-control, hypersensitivity to immediate rewards, and the cost of time spent waiting. However, delaying gratification may also require trust in people delivering future rewards as promised. To test the role of social trust, participants were presented with character vignettes and faces that varied in trustworthiness, and then choose between hypothetical smaller immediate or larger delayed rewards from those characters. Across two experiments, participants were less willing to wait for delayed rewards from less trustworthy characters, and perceived trustworthiness predicted willingness to delay gratification. These findings provide the first demonstration of a causal role for social trust in willingness to delay gratification, independent of other relevant factors, such as self-control or reward history. Thus, delaying gratification requires choosing not only a later reward, but a reward that is potentially less likely to be delivered, when there is doubt about the person promising it. Implications of this work include the need to revise prominent theories of delay of gratification, and new directions for interventions with populations characterized by impulsivity.