The Marshmallow Study Revisited

[Kuko 4000]

This makes sense to me:



http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=4622

Now a new study demonstrates that being able to delay gratification is influenced as much by the environment as by innate ability. Children who experienced reliable interactions immediately before the marshmallow task waited on average four times longer—12 versus three minutes—than youngsters in similar but unreliable situations.

It seems to me that the kids who didn't wait as much in the classic test could just have been from a more unreliable family / environment, etc.?

Didn't the results of the original test correlate with later life success (economical and health)? How strong was this effect?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_gratification

"To test the theory of a person's ability to delay gratification, the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1972), conducted by Prof. Walter Mischel, at Stanford University, California, studied a group of four-year-old children, each of whom was given one marshmallow, but promised two on condition that he or she wait twenty minutes before eating the first marshmallow. Some children were able to wait the twenty minutes, and some were not. The university researchers then studied the developmental progress of each participant child into adolescence, and reported that children able to delay gratification (wait) were psychologically better adjusted, more dependable persons, and, as high school students, scored significantly greater grades in the collegiate Scholastic Aptitude Test.[5]"