Casey Flashcards
What did Casey want to investigate?
Does delay of gratification in children predict impulse control abilities and sensitivity to alluring or social cues at the behavioural and neutral level when participants are in their 40’s?
What 2 groups were the participants put into when they were 4 years old, and by which test?
High delayers (those who could wait) and low delayers (those who couldn’t wait), using the marshmallow test.
What type of experiment was used?
Quasi experiment
What did cooling strategies do?
Meant the participants could wait longer when they were using them. They reduced appeal of the reward and took emotion away from the stimulus (instead of hot cues- emotional response).
What did Metcalfe & Mischel say about high/low delayers?
The ‘cool’ system is in the pre-frontal cortex- inferior frontal gyrus. More active in high delayers.
The ‘hot’ system is related to emotion and desires- ventral striatum. More active in low delayers.
What was the aim?
To see if people who were low delayers in the marshmallow test still have low self-control in their 40’s.
What was the sample at the start of the study?
562 children initially
What was the sample in experiment 1?
59, 40-year-olds (27 low delayers, 32 high delayers)
What happened in experiment 1?
Go/no-go task- pushed a button when they see a certain stimulus (hot and cold cues were go/no-go task). Each participant took did the 4 tasks at home on a laptop delivered to their home. Instructions appeared on the screen saying what the target stimulus was.
How long did each face appear for and how long was the interval between them?
They appeared for 500ms each, with a 1s interval.
What are 2 results of experiment 1?
No significant difference between high/low delayers in terms of reaction times/accuracy in go/no-go tasks.
Participants who could delay gratification as a child had a greater ability to supress impulse control as an adult.
What happened in experiment 2?
Participants took part in the go/no-go tasks in a fMRI scanner.
How long was the delay between images in experiment 2?
Between 2 to 14.5 seconds delay.
What was the sample in experiment 2?
27, 40-year-olds (15 high delayers, 11 low delayers). 1 male excluded for poor task performance.
What were 2 results of experiment 2?
- Both scored higher on accuracy rates for go cues & low delayers had higher false alarm rates
- Imaging showed 2 main differences between high and low delayers:
-> low delayers had higher activity in the ventral striatum (hot cues), lower activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (cold cues)
