Barragan-Jason Gladys, Atance Cristina, Kopp Leia, Hopfensitz Astrid
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada; Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse 31000, France.
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2018 Jul;171:14-30. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.01.018. Epub 2018 Feb 27.
Patience, or the ability to tolerate delay, is typically studied using delay of gratification (DoG) tasks. However, among other factors (e.g., type of reward), the use of a reward to test patience is affected by an individual's motivation to obtain the reward (e.g., degree of preference for the small vs. large reward). In addition, DoG tasks do not assess the extent to which an individual can wait in the absence of an explicit reward-or what we term "patience as a virtue." Accordingly, the current study used a new measure of patience-the "pure waiting paradigm"-in which 3- to 5-year-old children waited 3 min with nothing to do and with no explicit reward. We then examined the relation between performance on this task (as assessed by children's spontaneous patient behaviors) and performance on two DoG tasks (candy and video rewards). Significant correlations were found between DoG performance and patient behaviors in the pure waiting paradigm, especially when controlling for motivation. These results and methodology show for the first time a direct link between patience as a virtue and DoG performance and also provide new insights about the study of patience in children.
耐心，即容忍延迟的能力，通常通过延迟满足（DoG）任务来研究。然而，在其他因素（如奖励类型）中，使用奖励来测试耐心会受到个体获取奖励动机（如对小奖励与大奖励的偏好程度）的影响。此外，延迟满足任务并未评估个体在没有明确奖励的情况下能够等待的程度——即我们所说的“作为美德的耐心”。因此，当前的研究采用了一种新的耐心测量方法——“纯粹等待范式”，即3至5岁的儿童在无所事事且没有明确奖励的情况下等待3分钟。然后，我们考察了这项任务的表现（通过儿童自发的耐心行为来评估）与两项延迟满足任务（糖果和视频奖励）的表现之间的关系。在延迟满足任务表现与纯粹等待范式中的耐心行为之间发现了显著的相关性，尤其是在控制动机的情况下。这些结果和方法首次表明了作为美德的耐心与延迟满足任务表现之间的直接联系，也为儿童耐心研究提供了新的见解。
