[The effects of the modes of task-oriented verbalization and the attractiveness of the tempting-objects on the kindergarteners' waiting behavior].

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of overt and covert task-oriented verbalizations on kindergarteners' waiting behavior in the situation where the attractiveness of games was varied. One hundred and twenty kindergarteners, 4-6 years olds, were prohibited to touch the games while they were waiting for the experimenter who was out of the room to come back. High and low attractive situations were set by manipulating the attractiveness of games. In each situation, three treatment conditions were used: overt task-oriented verbalization, covert task-oriented verbalization, and no verbalization conditions. Subjects under the verbalization conditions were asked to respond to the buzzer signals during the waiting period by saying "don't touch the games" either aloud (overt condition) or silently moving lips (covert condition). Transgression latency was used to measure the effect of verbalization on waiting behavior. The results were as follows: (1) The overt task-oriented verbalization was effective in the low attractive situation, but not in the high attractive situation. (2) The covert task-oriented verbalization was not effective in both the high and low attractive situations.

[A developmental study of the effects of the contents of self-verbalization on the waiting behavior].

The effects of overt self-verbalizations with different contents were examined developmentally with an experimental paradigm under which children were to resist temptation while waiting alone. Subjects, either four or six year old, were forbidden to touch attractive toys while the experimenter was out of the room, and were variously instructed to self-verbalize during the period. "Task-oriented" subjects were to verbalize what they were told not to do. "Positive temptation-oriented" subjects were instructed to talk about the attractiveness of the forbidden objects. "Distraction" subjects were to verbalize irrelevant things to the waiting task. "Negative temptation-oriented" subjects were instructed to talk about the toys' unattractive aspects. No self-verbalization instruction was given to "No verbalization" subjects. Transgression latency was used as an index of waiting behavior. The results were as follows: (1) Positive temptation-oriented did not affect the four-year olds' waiting behavior, but made waiting more difficult for the six-year olds'. (2) Task-oriented verbalization helped waiting behavior for both groups. (3) Neither distraction nor negative temptation-oriented verbalization affected waiting behavior of either group.

[Effects of self-control strategies on 4-year-olds' resistance to temptation].

Two experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesis that 4-year-olds' failure to resist to temptation was caused by their attention to motivational qualities of tempting objects. The forbidden toy situation forbidden to play with the attractive toy was used. In Experiment I that manipulated attention style of tempting objects, four conditions were set. Two conditions of these were conditions that prevented from attending to the motivational qualities of tempting objects and consisted of distraction condition that distracted from toy and toy-negative condition that evaluated the toy negatively. The other two conditions were control condition and toy-positive condition that attended to the motivational qualities of toy. The main results indicated that the transgression latencies of distraction and toy-negative conditions were longer than the other two conditions. In Experiment II, subjects were instructed to choose the strategy that they would use between stimulus pairs obtained by combining three strategy used in Experiment I. The results indicated that the number of subjects choosing toy-positive strategy were more than the other strategies in pairing toy-positive strategy with other two strategies. The hypothesis was supported from the present study.

[Development of delay of gratification in preschool children].

Developmental changes in delay-choice behavior and delay-maintenance behavior were investigated in situations, in which the difference in value between immediate reward and delayed reward was set small (S situation) and large (L situation). Ninety kindergarteners aged four, five and six were assigned to either one of the two situations. (1) In S situation, the choice of immediate reward was dominant in all age groups. (2) In L situation, the choice of delayed reward was dominant in all age groups. (3) In S situation, 6-year olds maintained longer delay than 4- and 5-year olds. (4) The delay time of 4- and 5-year olds in L situation was longer than that in S situation and was not significantly different from that of 6-year olds in L situation.