Memphis’ Metric of Success

A metric of success for Memphis: the number of at-risk children who grow up to become the neighbors we trust, the parents we admire, the workers we employ, and the men and women in whose successes we take great pride

This is a story about a small experiment … with potentially large implications for the future of Memphis.

In the late nineteen-sixties, the psychologist Walter Mischel wanted to find a way to measure the ability of young children to delay gratification. To do this, he designed a simple experiment. Three-year-olds were shown a tray piled high with marshmallows, and were given a choice: they could have one marshmallow right away or – if they could wait for a few minutes while the researcher ran a quick errand – they could have two marshmallows when he returned. The children were then left alone with the tray of marshmallows.

Not surprisingly, the minute the researcher left the room, many of the children helped themselves to a couple of fistfuls of marshmallows. More surprisingly, nearly a third of the children were able to hold off on enjoying the sweets until the researcher returned. This group of children was able to overcome their desire to help themselves to the treats; they had somehow learned how to delay gratification.

Skills Begets Skills

For most children, skills associated with self-regulation begin to develop somewhere around the age of 3. But human brains develop over time, and are built from the “bottom up.” The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through a process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. Young children learn by interacting with their environments and with the people in their lives. Skills beget skills, and higher order brain functions, such as self-regulation, delay of  gratification, feeling compassion, and compassionate emotion, all emerge after the brain’s more basic wiring (including the sensory pathways) is in place.

In this sense, the group of children who were able to wait for their reward had learned to engage in a higher order of cognitive functioning than their classmates who couldn’t wait. Even more striking are the differences that emerged between these two groups later in life. By the time they reached high school, Professor Mischel identified significant differences between the low-delayers (the nursery schoolers who couldn’t wait to eat the marshmallows), and the high-delayers (who had successfully fought back the urge to sneak a marshmallow).

By high school, the low-delayers, as a group, exhibited a much higher rate of problem behaviors. They earned significantly lower scores on standardized exams and they had a much more difficult time managing stressful situations. When the researchers evaluated the two groups  again when they reached age thirty, the differences between the cohorts had become still more striking: As adults, the low-delayers had significantly poorer health,  higher rates of obesity and more problems with substance abuse.

What factors lead some children to perform better on delay of gratification tasks? Over the years, Professor Mischel has tried versions of this experiment with many different groups of children. Time and again, he has found striking differences between groups of children based on their economic and social conditions. As a group, children from low-income families tend to score far below average on delay of gratification tasks when compared to their more financially secure peers. In turn, low-income children are more susceptible to a broad range of diminished later life outcomes.

Toxicity

Decades of research demonstrates that children born into poverty and children whose parents have low levels of education are at greater risk for poor life outcomes. The marshmallow study helps us understand part of the dynamic that underlies this connection. Children who are born into poverty spend their early childhoods dealing with the toxic stress of residential transience, chaotic home lives, family fragility, and uncertain health, nutrition, and safety. As the facets of their surroundings shape their developing brains, these children are learning to survive in their environments. They are not practicing the higher order cognitive functions that they will be called upon to successfully navigate higher education or a knowledge-oriented job market.

The association between economic class and the capacity to delay gratification stands to reason. A child who grows up poor has few opportunities to practice delay. The increased chaos and stress of an impoverished household undermines the regular schedules and consistent and high expectations that teach delay of gratification. Without a set dinner time, for example, children aren’t taught that snacking will spoil their appetite for dinner. Without high academic expectations, including regular homework hours, they don’t learn that TV needs to wait until after homework is done. Without an expectation of presents under the Christmas tree, children aren’t confronted with the classic call to stay off Santa’s Naughty list.

But what if we could teach children simple ways to jump-start their capacity for self-regulation? This has been the focus of much of Professor Mischel’s recent work, including teaching children to use “mental tricks” – such as pretending the marshmallows are only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame. These tricks seem to work dramatically when it comes to improving children’s self-control. Imagine what difference it would make if more parents and teachers understood the importance of teaching children these skills, as early as possible.

Scenarios

What does any of this have to do with the future of Memphis? Actually, it suggests two possible futures:

The first of these futures follows from the link between poverty and poor performance on delay of gratification measures. Every year, more than half of the 15,000 children born in Shelby County are born into poverty. Approximately 6,000 of these children are born into families living in dire poverty (on incomes of less than $10,700 a year for a family of four). These children will enter kindergarten five years from now. If current trends continue, only about 60 percent of these children will graduate from high school in 17 years or so.

The marshmallow studies suggest that when children start life at a profound disadvantage, as our children are starting life, they are at much greater risk for poor developmental outcomes, diminishing their prospects for success in school and into adulthood. As a group, these children are more prone to behavior problems, they run a higher risk of poor school performance, poor health, drug addiction and teen parenting. This configuration of factors paints a bleak scenario for the future of our workforce, our tax-base, our neighborhoods, our academic achievement profile, our teen pregnancy rate, and our crime statistics.

An alternate future is also suggested by Professor Mischel’s experience in introducing young children to simple self-regulation skills. In this scenario, Memphis becomes a community that recognizes the importance of fostering brain development during the first years of life not only for the adults our youngest children will become, but also for the community that we will become as a result of the decisions we make today and in the near future.

With a shared vision of the future that we would prefer, we have access to a half-century of careful research on the long-term implications of patterns of development in early childhood. This research tells us quite clearly what small steps to take today to move the next generation in the right direction. No doubt, this will mean raising the level of shared understanding in the community, as well as changing the attitudes and behaviors of individuals, families, neighborhoods, businesses, and governments. But the payoff is significant:  By promoting and supporting optimal early childhood brain development, including delay of gratification and other higher cognitive functions, we place more children on a stronger pathway.

In this scenario, our shared metric for success as a community becomes the number of at-risk children who beat the odds to become the neighbors we trust, the parents we admire, the workers we employ, and the men and women in whose successes we take great pride.

More:

For more on the long term implications of the developmental well-being of young children in Memphis, visit Urban Child Institute.

Jonah Lehrer:  “Don’t! The secret of self-control.” The New Yorker magazine, May 18, 2009.

Talaris Research Institute, “Self-Regulation.”

Bruce Perry, “Self-Regulation, the Second Core Strength.”

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