The value of control and the influence of values

Abstract

The article in PNAS by Casey et al. (1) reports previously undescribed data from individuals who participated as preschoolers in Mischel's now-classic delay of gratification studies conducted at Stanford University's Bing Nursery School in the early 1970s. Now in their mid-40s, these individuals performed a Go–No-go task, in which they were instructed to press a key when a certain stimulus (e.g., fearful face) was presented but to refrain from responding when another stimulus (e.g., happy face) was presented. Individuals who as children had resisted eating an enticing treat, such as a marshmallow, and instead waited up to 15 min for a larger reward (and who continued to present greater self-control across childhood and into adolescence)—dubbed high delayers—performed better than those who failed to wait (i.e., low delayers) but only when required to refrain from responding to happy faces. This finding is important because it adds to a growing body of evidence that individual differences in cognitive control (also called “executive function”) measured in early childhood are associated with important developmental outcomes. For example, results from another ongoing longitudinal study found that cognitive control reported between the ages of 3 and 11 y predicted (as a gradient) physical health, substance dependence, socioeconomic status, and the likelihood of a criminal conviction at the age of 32 y, even after controlling for social class of origin and intelligence quotient (2). The Bing study is especially compelling in that cognitive control has been measured in direct assessments over time in addition to verbal reports.