KQED News Mind/Shift – Katrina Schwartz
“It all started when psychology professor Walter Mischel was watching his four closely-spaced daughters growing up. He realized he had no idea what was going on in their brains that made it possible for a child who at one moment had no impulse control and just a few months later could inhibit her emotions, wait for things and have conversations. He became curious about how children develop these skills, which led to the famous marshmallow experiment conducted at the Bing Nursery School on Stanford’s campus, where Mischel was a professor. That study has become famous over the last 50 years, leading to many hilarious YouTube videos (none of which are the original test subjects) and a lifetime’s work examining how various strategies can help both adults and children learn to delay gratification.”(more)