The Comparative Study Of "Gratification Delay" Ability Between Children With Behavior Disorder And Normal Children

Life is filled with various conflictive choices. On the one hand, some choices are immediate, easy and pleasant for people; on the other hand, development and success can only be achieved by working hard to overcome difficulties and resist temptations. In such cases, choices are involved with an important topic in psychology—"delay of gratification", which is the concentrated embodiment of self-awareness of human beings, not only essential for the development of self-control ability, but also significant for the development of human beings. For children, the development of"delay of gratification"will influence their whole lives, working as an important mark of growing mature from immature and independent from dependent, a necessary condition for individuals to accomplish their tasks, establish good interpersonal relationships and adapt to the society successfully, and the basic prerequisite and guarantee for the self-development, self-fulfillment and final perfection of individuals.This thesis begins with the comparison of"delay of gratification"ability development between children with behavior disorder and normal children, aiming at exploring the characteristics and differences of their ability development by adopting questionnaire (namely, Parents Checklist in Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist) and experimental method. On this basis, the writer tries to put forward"delay strategy"which can improve the ability of"delay of gratification"of these two groups of children, hoping to be used for reference by future educators in developing children's ability of"delay of gratification". According to the result of this research, second-grade students in elementary schools have already possessed the ability of"delay of gratification"and been able to use some delay strategies, but children with behavior disorder and normal children are obviously different in the aspects of"delay of gratification"ability development, time of waiting for the delay and adoption of delay strategies (including strategy of self-distraction, reward-orientation, and looking for help from classmates and teachers). Specifically speaking, these two groups of children have significant correlation with time of waiting for delay and no significant correlation with leaving their seats, but children with behavior disorder have significant positive correlation with such three delay strategies as trying to ring the bell and looking for the experimenter and rewards, and normal children are significantly correlated with adopting strategies of self-reinforcement and distracting their attentions by activities. Besides, there is no obvious difference between sexes in time of waiting for delay and adoption of delay strategies except for distracting their attentions by activities.