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Children are notoriously bad at delaying gratification to achieve later, greater rewards -and some are worse at waiting than others. Individual differences in the ability-to-wait have been attributed to self-control, in part because of evidence that long-delayers are more successful in later life (e.g.,Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990. Here we provide evidence that, in addition to self-control, children's wait-times are modulated by an implicit, rational decision-making process that considers environmental reliability. We tested children (M= 4;6,N= 28) using a classic paradigm-the marshmallow task (Mischel, 1974)-in an environment demonstrated to be either unreliable or reliable. Children in the reliable condition waited significantly longer than those in the unreliable condition(p< 0.0005), suggesting that children's wait-times reflected reasoned beliefs about whether waiting would ultimately pay off. Thus, wait-times on sustained delay-of-gratification tasks (e.g., the marshmallow task) may not only reflect differences in self-control abilities, but also beliefs about the stability of the world.

Young children who use gestures outperform their peers in problem-solving tasks, says a new study. Children aged between two and five were asked to sort cards printed with colored shapes first by color, then by shape. Making this switch can be tricky but the study found that kids who gesture are more likely to make the mental switch and group the shapes accurately.

Czech doctors are prescribing psycho-pharmaceutical drugs, such as antidepressants, to more and more children, treating the symptoms rather than the causes of their condition, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes Thursday

Some young children accurately diagnosed as autistic lose their symptoms and their diagnosis as they get older, say US researchers.

Performing deliberate acts of kindness makes pre-teen children more popular with their peers, say scientists.

Most parents tell lies to their children as a tactic to change their behaviour, suggests a study of families in the United States and China.

The case against labeling and medicating children, and effective alternatives for treating them

The "lost in a shopping mall" study has been cited to support claims that psychotherapists can implant memories of false autobiographical information of childhood trauma in their patients. The mall study originated in 1991 as 5 pilot experiments involving 3 children and 2 adult participants. The University of Washington Human Subjects Committee granted approval for the mall study on August 10, 1992. The preliminary results with the 5 pilot subjects were announced 4 days later. An analysis of the mall study shows that beyond the external misrepresentations, internal scientific methodological errors cast doubt on the validity of the claims that have been attributed to the mall study within scholarly and legal arenas. The minimal involvement�or, in some cases, negative impact�of collegial consultation, academic supervision, and peer review throughout the evolution of the mall study are reviewed.

We're quick to blame sugar for our children's hyperactivity and our own energy crashes after eating something sweet - but scientific evidence points to a more complex explanation

The result could be due to the inattention to facial cues, not reduced empathy, among people with autism

Roots of Empathy's mission is to build caring, peaceful, and civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults

Using only the power of their imaginations, children can transform a box into a boat, or a living room into a peril-fraught jungle. But while many famous theorists, including Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, have posited that pretending fuels children's intellectual and creative development, that may not be the case, suggests University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lillard, PhD, online in Psychological Bulletin.

For the past four decades, the "marshmallow test" has served as a classic experimental measure of children's self-control: will a preschooler eat one of the fluffy white confections now or hold out for two later? The original research began at Stanford University in the late 1960s. Walter Mischel and other researchers famously showed that individual differences in the ability to delay gratification on this simple task correlated strongly with success in later life. Longer wait times as a child were linked years later to higher SAT scores, less substance abuse, and parental reports of better social skills.