What about cookies? :)

From a psychological standpoint, the child doesnt need to wait so long as days, but a few minutes - just "allow" them to eat the cookie while alone/unmonitored, but before leaving the room tell them about a greater reward for having skipped it when you come back.

The "trick" is to let them know you´ll take 2 minutes to come back, but actually taking 10min or so, building up on their axiety/impulsiveness - this is what the marshmellow text evaluates after all, right?

Dear Malou,

If I were you, I'd use the classical procedure or an adaptive, but without eatable things. Sorry, but I don't think, that the idea to lie to a child about time is very good :)

Good luck in your research!

If you look at the aspects of self regulation I agree with former commentator that you should probably have the reward close in time, say minuties. Why not do a classical replica with an actual marshmallow? I also agree that one shouldn't lie, but you could say "Ill be back in a little while". Given the age of your test children I wouldn't wait longer than 5 minutes. If the risk of being over weight is making you hesitant to use candy or cookies as treats, maybe you can use a fun toy or an ipad-game... just some thoughts.. good luck!

Thank you!

Dear Malou,

As the Marshmallow Task aims at assessing the ability to wait (in other words the immediate gratification paradigm), it is important that the gain is tempting and easy to understand for children. Giving material things can be complicated when children are young as they do not have a good concept of money. Furthermore, it is difficult to find a gift that can easily be doubled and can be used with both boys and girls. It is generally accepted that sweets are the best options for children whereas we use money for adolescents and adults.

Whether you use candies, M&Ms, Smarties, cookies or marshmallows does not influence the task much. The important factor is the waiting time alone and that the child is offered the choice of immediately consuming a treat or waiting a period of time to receive double or more. The waiting period is usually not specified to the child, but simply "when I come back". Waiting days or weeks is too long for 3-5 year-old.

I suggest you check this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZikfUI0G5o where the task is demonstrated. Some children in the video are about the same age as your group. As you can see, one main advantage with the marshmallow is that children may feel tempted to "cheat" and nibble on parts. This makes for great qualitative observations.

As only one third of children around the age of 4 pass this test, this might be a rather quick task for your experiment (see Logue & Logue, 1995).

Good luck with your project,

Dear Mylene,

Thanks a lot for your answer. We are going to visit the children at home. So now we are in doubt if this experiment would be feasible in a home visit, Also we're in doubt if 15 minutes wouldn't be too long for the youngest children. Do you have experience with this test?

Regards,

Malou

Dear Malou,

I agree that the Marshmallow Test is not suitable for a home visit. Having done many home assessments myself, there are so many things that can distract the experiment conditions... I would personally advise against it. Keeping a child in a room for 15 minutes without distractors is virtually impossible at home. The kid could just get bored and grab a toy. 

For the waiting time, you would typically use 15 minutes for your age group. The original task used 15 minutes with 3.5 to almost 6 years old.

Best regards,