Nicole L. Wilson

Dimensionality of brain networks linked to life-long individual differences in self-control

The ability to delay gratification in childhood has been linked to positive outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. Here we examine a subsample of participants from a seminal longitudinal study of self-control throughout a subject’s lifespan. Self control, first studied in children at age 4, is now reexamined 40 years later, on a task that required control over the contents of working memory. We examine whether patterns of brain activation on this task can reliably distinguish participants with consistently low and high self-control abilities (low vs. high delayers). We find that low delayers recruit significantly higher-dimensional neural networks when performing the task compared to high delayers. High delayers are also more homogeneous as a group in their neural patterns compared to low delayers. From these brain patterns we can predict with 71% accuracy, whether a participant is a high or low delayer. The present results suggest that dimensionality of neural networks is a biological predictor of self-control abilities.

Observation-Oriented Modeling: Going beyond "Is It All a Matter of Chance"?.

An alternative to null hypothesis significance testing is presented and discussed. This approach, referred to as observation-oriented modeling, is centered on model building in an effort to explicate the structures and processes believed to generate a set of observations. In terms of analysis, this novel approach complements traditional methods based on means, variances, and covariances with methods of pattern detection and analysis. Using data from a previously published study by Shoda et al., the basic tenets and methods of observation-oriented modeling are demonstrated and compared with traditional methods, particularly with regard to null hypothesis significance testing.

Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later

Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY 10065; Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195; Lucas Imaging Center, Department of Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305; Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853; and Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

Enhancing Stress Management Coping Skills Using Induced Affect and Collaborative Daily Assessment

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the use of induced affect (IA) and collaborative (therapeutic) assessment (CA) as components of Cognitive-Affective Stress Management Training (CASMT). IA is a technique for rehearsing cognitive and physical relaxationcoping skills under conditions of high affective arousal, which has been shown to result in high levels of coping self-efficacy. CA provides diary-based feedback to clients about the processes underlying theirstress experiences and helps identify affect-arousing experiences to be targeted by IA. We include descriptions of the IA technique and anonline stress and coping daily diary, as well as sample transcripts illustrating how CA is integrated into CASMT and how IA evokes high affective arousal and skills rehearsal. To illustrate idiographic assessment, we also describe threetreatment cases involving female clients between the ages of 20 and 35 with anxiety symptoms who participated in six weeks of CASMT and reported their daily stress and coping experiences (before, during, and following the intervention)for a total of ten weeks. The resulting time series data, analyzed using Simulation Modeling Analysis (SMA), revealed that all clients reported improved negative affect regulation over the course of treatment, yet they exhibited idiographic patterns of change on other outcome and coping skills variables. These results illustrate how IA and CA may be used to enhance emotional self-regulation and how time-series analyses can identify idiographic aspects of treatment response that would not be evident in group data.

Cohort effects in children’s delay of gratification.

In the 1960s at Stanford University’s Bing Preschool, children were given the option of taking an immediate, smaller reward or receiving a delayed, larger reward by waiting until the experimenter returned. Since then, the “Marshmallow Test” has been used in numerous studies to assess delay of gratification. Yet, no prior study has compared the performance of children across the decades. Common wisdom suggests children today would wait less long, preferring immediate gratification. Study 1 confirmed this intuition in a survey of adults in the United States (N = 354; Mdn age = 34 years). To test the validity of this prediction, Study 2 analyzed the original data for average delay-of-gratification times (out of 10 min) of 840 typically developing U.S. children in three birth cohorts from similar middle-high socioeconomic backgrounds in the late 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s, matched on age (3 to 5 years) at the time of testing. In contrast to popular belief, results revealed a linear increase in delay over time (p < .0001, &b.eta;2p = .047), such that children in the 2000s waited on average 2 min longer than children in the 1960s, and 1 min longer than children in the 1980s. This pattern was robust with respect to age, sex, geography and sampling effects. We posit that increases in symbolic thought, technology, preschool education, and public attention to executive function skills have contributed to this finding, but caution that more research in diverse populations is needed to examine the generality of the findings and to identify causal factors.