The Development Of Preschool Children's Ability To Delay Satisfaction And Its Relationship With Psychological Theory

The delay of gratification is a sign of mental maturity, being the kind of choice orientation to forego immediate gratification for the sake of more valuable delayed outcomes, and the ability of self-control shown during the waiting process. Theory of mind (TOM) refers to a kind of capability to recognize psychological states, such as needs, beliefs, intentions, emotions, etc., and thereby to predict and explain corresponding actions of oneself and others under certain circumstances. Some researchers think that the development of children's delayed gratification and theory of mind is in parallel. At first, our study adopted the adaptation of the Self-imposed Delay paradigm taking example by Mischel(1970) investigating 147 children aged 3-5 years old to explore their characteristics of the delayed ability. At the same time, we want to know how how much children like the reward, the number of the rewards, the time for the reward influence their delayed gratification. Secondly, we adopted the classic appearance-realistic task, location-transfer task and took example by Guoxiong Lew and Fuzhe Fang's (2007) the task of understanding desires and emotions exploring children' understanding on the desire, false beliefs and emotions. Results are as follows:(1)3-5 year old children's delaying time have significant difference in age.4 and 5 years old children could delay longer than 3 years old children.(2) When 3-4 years old children in the face of larger quantities of rewards instead of smaller quantities of rewards, theirs delaying time was much longer, and when they in the face of the rewards they liked particularly, theirs delaying time was also much longer.(3)The differences of the number of rewards were significant on 4 year old children and the degree of like particularly. when 4 years old children were faced with their favorite rewards, if the number of rewards was 3, theirs delaying time was much longer. Age differences were significant on the number of rewards for 3 and the degree of like particularly. When the number of rewards was 3 and the rewards were favorite for children,4 years old children's delaying time was longer than 3 years old children.(4)4 and 5 years old children who got rewards having longer delaying time than those who not, and there were significant differences between them.(5)Firstly,3-5 years old children's understanding self-false beliefs had significant differences in age, and 5 years old children behaved better than 3 and 4 years old. Secondly, There were significant differences in understanding others false beliefs in age, and 4,5 years old children behaved better than 3 years old. Thirdly, there were significant differences in predicting others behavior in age, and 5 years old children behaved better than 3 and 4 years old. Fourthly, there were significant differences in understanding desire in age. As the growth of the children, the older children's understanding level were significantly higher than the young children. Fifth, there were significant differences in understanding emotions in age, and 4,5 years old children behaved better than 3 years old. Sixth, there were significant differences in understanding the degree of emotional judgment in age. As the growth of the children, they have the tendency to sharpen the emotional judgment.(6)Children's delayed gratification was correlated with the understanding of self and others false beliefs, others behavior prediction, and emotions significantly, but it was not correlated with the understanding of desire significantly.Based on the results of the study, we drew the following conclusions:(1)3-5 years old is the rapid period of the development for delay of gratification and theory of mind, and 4 years old is an important age stage. (2)3-4 years old children can balance the relationship of the number of rewards and the degree of like for rewards to regulate and control their delayed gratification behavior. (3)With the development of preschool children's ability of delayed gratification, their theory of mind also gradually developed, and both of them development together.