Vagal Tone and Children's Delay of Gratification: Differential Sensitivity in Resource-Poor and Resource-Rich Environments.
Children from different socioeconomic backgrounds have differing abilities to delay gratification, and impoverished children have the greatest difficulties in doing so. In the present study, we examined the role of vagal tone in predicting the ability to delay gratification in both resource-rich and resource-poor environments. We derived hypotheses from evolutionary models of children's conditional adaptation to proximal rearing contexts. In Study 1, we tested whether elevated vagal tone was associated with shorter delay of gratification in impoverished children. In Study 2, we compared the relative role of vagal tone across two groups of children, one that had experienced greater impoverishment and one that was relatively middle-class. Results indicated that in resource-rich environments, higher vagal tone was associated with longer delay of gratification. In contrast, high vagal tone in children living in resource-poor environments was associated with reduced delay of gratification. We interpret the results with an eye to evolutionary-developmental models of the function of children's stress-response system and adaptive behavior across varying contexts of economic risk.
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester melissa.sturge-apple@rochester.edu.
Melissa L
ML
Sturge-Apple
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester.
Jennifer H
JH
Suor
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester.
Patrick T
PT
Davies
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.
Dante
D
Cicchetti
Psychology Department, Westchester Community College.
Michael A
MA
Skibo
Mt. Hope Family Center, Rochester, New York.
Fred A
FA
Rogosch
D002652:Child Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D065786:Delay Discounting / Q000502:physiology*; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D065809:Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia / Q000502:physiology*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014630:Vagus Nerve / Q000502:physiology*
delay of gratification; evolutionary psychology; poverty; stress reactions