The Development Of Delayed Gratification In Preschool Left-behind Children Under Different Delay Conditions

The needs and abilities to predict future states are described as future-oriented cognitive abilities.Delayed gratification as one of cognitive abilities has a positive predictive effect on children's future social life.This study combines classic selfdelayed gratification paradigm and choice task paradigm to explore the delay selection and completion of delayed gratification tasks made by preschool left-behind children for different family member under two delay conditions.Study 1 conducts a self-delay gratification experiment and the parent-child delay gratification experiment.And explore the effect of egoistic conditions on children's performance in parent-child delay gratification experiment.Results of Study 1:(1)As age increases,children are more inclined to choose delayed rewards for themselves and their family members;(2)The number of rewards children choose for family members increases with age;(3)With age,the number of rewards actually received by children gradually approaches the number of rewards they want to obtain.This trend develops at the age of 3 to 4 years,while at the age of 5,it is relatively flat;(4)Compared with non-left-behind children,left-behind children are more reluctant to continue to wait for the rewards which they want during the waiting process,and they are more reluctant to continue to wait for the rewards for their fathers;(5)Regardless of whom the rewards are distributed to,the number of rewards actually distributed by the children to family members is significantly less than the number of rewards waiting for family members,and the difference in the number of 5-year-old children allocated to others is more significant than that of 3-year-old children.Study 2 conducts a self-delay gratification experiment and the delay choice performance of children in parent-child delay gratification experiment.Results of Study 2:(1)With the increase of age,children tend to choose delay gratification and receive more delayed rewards for themselves;(2)The difference in the number of rewards that children received for themselves and the number of rewards they want to obtain is consistent with the results of Study 1;(3)There is no significant difference in the delayed selection made by children for different family member at the age level and left-behind situation;(4)In the parent-child delay gratification experiment,long waiting time has a negative impact on children who choose delayed rewards for themselves,and the likelihood of choosing delayed rewards for parents is reduced,but has no obvious effect on children who choose timely rewards for themselves.Under short delay conditions,the number of rewards chosen by children for themselves and their parents is significantly greater than the number of rewards chosen by others.Whereas,under long delay conditions,the number of rewards chosen for parents is significantly less than that chosen for themselves but there is no difference from the number of rewards chosen for others.In summary,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)With the increase of age,the number of rewards actually received by children gradually approaches the number of rewards they want to obtain,and 4 years old for turning point;(2)Compared with non-left-behind children,left-behind children are more reluctant to continue to wait for the rewards for their fathers and themselves in the waiting process;(3)Under the condition of self-interest is not conducive to maintain children's performance in parentchild delay choice;the longer the waiting time for self-delay gratification tasks,the more negative impact on parent-child delay gratification experiment.