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.