Self-Regulation Strategies during a Delay of Gratification Task: Group Differences in Children with ASD and Typical Development

Background:

Significant research with children with typical development (TD) has shown that the ability to delay gratification predicts positive outcomes such as improved school readiness and better social adaptation (Feldman & Klein, 2003; Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988). Certain strategies involving self-distraction such as gaze aversion have been shown to facilitate children’s ability to wait for a reward on the Delay of Gratification task (DoG; Cournoyer & Trudel, 1991; Mischel et al., 1988), a seven-minute assessment in which children are challenged to postpone immediate gratification in favor of a larger, more desirable reward. In contrast, temptation behaviors, including direct gaze toward and touching the reward, can interfere with successful performance on this task (Ostfeld-Etzion et al., 2015). Although one prior study found 6-7 year old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were less able to delay gratification (Faja & Dawson, 2015), no research has investigated the self-regulation and temptation behaviors used during the DoG by these children.

Objectives:

One purpose of our study was to assess group differences (ASD vs. TD) in the ability to delay gratification using a young sample of children. We also wanted to investigate group differences in children’s self-regulation strategies and engagement in temptation behaviors during this task by children with autism and typical development.

Methods:

Our sample included 104 children (ages 3:0 to 6:11), 57 (46% female) with TD and 47 children with ASD (17% female). Children completed a seven-minute Delay of Gratification task developed by Walter Mischel (1988) in a laboratory setting. Videotapes of the task were coded for total wait time, self-regulatory behaviors, which included gaze aversion, kinetic movement, and verbal mediation, and temptation behaviors including direct gaze and touching the food reward. Total wait time was used as an index of children’s ability to delay gratification.

Results:

Using independent samples t-tests to assess group differences (ASD vs. TD) related to the DoG, we found ASD children had shorter wait times than children with TD (t = -2.13, p = .03). There were no significant group differences in percentage of time using any individual self-regulatory strategy: gaze aversion (t = -.83, p = .41), kinetic movement (t = .67, p = .53), and verbal mediation (t = .15, p = .88). However, children with autism spent a higher percentage of time engaged in touching behaviors (t = 2.78, p = .007) compared to their TD peers (see Table 1).

Conclusions:

These results support prior research on the reduced ability to delay gratification in children with ASD and extend this research to a younger sample. We also found that the time spent in self-regulation strategies by children with ASD did not differ significantly from their typically developing peers. However, children on the autism spectrum spent more time engaging in temptation behaviors such as touching the reward. We know of no other research that has investigated the unique behaviors of children with ASD during the DoG task. Future research should investigate whether specific self-regulatory behaviors are effective in helping these children successfully complete this task.