I en gentagelse og udvidelse af Mischels marshmallow-studie fandt man, at børn, hvis mødre ikke havde afsluttet college, kun viste en svagere sammenhæng mellem evnen til at udsætte tilfredsstillelse og senere præstationer. Et ekstra minut med at vente ved 4-årsalderen forudsagde en lille stigning i præstationer ved 15 år, men denne sammenhæng blev reduceret betydeligt, når man kontrollerede for familieforhold og tidlig kognitiv evne. Effekten på adfærdsmæssige resultater var minimal og ofte ikke statistisk signifikant.
Titel på undersøgelse:
Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes.
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Hele abstrakt på originalsprog:
We replicated and extended Shoda, Mischel, and Peake’s (1990) famous marshmallow study, which showed strong bivariate correlations between a child’s ability to delay gratification just before entering school and both adolescent achievement and socioemotional behaviors. Concentrating on children whose mothers had not completed college, we found that an additional minute waited at age 4 predicted a gain of approximately one tenth of a standard deviation in achievement at age 15. But this bivariate correlation was only half the size of those reported in the original studies and was reduced by two thirds in the presence of controls for family background, early cognitive ability, and the home environment. Most of the variation in adolescent achievement came from being able to wait at least 20 s. Associations between delay time and measures of behavioral outcomes at age 15 were much smaller and rarely statistically significant.