The ability of children to delay gratification is correlated with a range of positive outcomes in adulthood, showing the potential impact of helping young children increase their competence in this area. This study investigated the influence of symbolic models on the self-control of 3-year old children. Eighty-three children were randomly assigned to one of three modelling conditions: personal storytelling, impersonal storytelling, and control. Children were tested on the delay-of-gratification maintenance paradigm both before and after being exposed to a symbolic model or control condition. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant differences between the two storytelling groups and the control group, indicating that the symbolic models did not influence children's ability to delay gratification. A serendipitous finding showed a positive relationship between the ability of children to wait and their production and accurate use of temporal terms, which was more pronounced in girls than boys. This finding may be an indication that a higher temporal vocabulary is linked to a continuous representation of the self in time, facilitating a child's representation of the future-self receiving a larger reward than what the present-self could receive.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 February 2025.
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#4,439,274
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#4,185
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Outputs of similar age
#51,993
of 257,904 outputs
Outputs of similar age from PeerJ
#80
of 161 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,882,990 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 81st percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 14,092 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 17.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 257,904 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 161 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its contemporaries.
