CET-6 Listening Lecture: What the Marshmallow Test Really Tells Us

Recording Three.

Picture a four-year-old alone in a room with one marshmallow on a plate.

An adult says: you can eat it now, or wait, and get two.

This was the marshmallow test, run by Walter Mischel at Stanford University.

Some children ate the treat at once. Others sang, or covered their eyes.

Years later, the children who had waited longer tended to do better at school!

For a long time, the lesson seemed clear: self-control predicts success.

But later research has made the story more complicated.

Later, researchers at the University of Rochester added one step before the test.

An adult promised the children better art materials, and then either kept the promise or broke it.

Children who had met the reliable adult waited about four times longer!

So waiting isn't only about willpower.

It's also a sensible choice when you can trust that the reward will come.

Then, in 2018, a much larger study repeated the test with a more varied group of children.

The link with later success was much weaker.

Once family background was taken into account, it almost disappeared.

Questions twenty-two to twenty-five are based on the recording you have just heard.

Question twenty-two. What were the children asked to do in the marshmallow test?

Question twenty-three. What did the researchers in Rochester change?

Question twenty-four. What does the Rochester study suggest about waiting?

Question twenty-five. What did the 2018 study find?

Famous experiments are a good start, not the final word.

And if someone offers you two marshmallows, make sure you trust them first!