Good Things Come to Those Who Wait: Delaying Gratification Likely Does Matter for Later Achievement (A Commentary on Watts, Duncan, & Quan, 2018).

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

Who cites it

11 citing papers in PubMed.

1. Infant expectations of instant or delayed gratification.Scientific reports · 2020
   Trial
2. Adaptive habits: understanding executive function and its development.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026
   Review
3. Recognizing the future utility of a solution: When do children choose to retain and share an object to solve a future problem?The British journal of developmental psychology · 2025
   Article
4. The power of cultural habits: The role of effortless control in delaying gratification.Current opinion in psychology · 2024
   Review
5. Why doesn't executive function training improve academic achievement? Rethinking individual differences, relevance, and engagement from a contextual framework.Journal of cognition and development : official journal of the Cognitive Development Society · 2023
   Article
6. How is Patient Adherence Possible? A Novel Mechanistic Model of Adherence Based on Humanities.Patient preference and adherence · 2023
   Review
7. Illusory Essences: A Bias Holding Back Theorizing in Psychological Science.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2022
   Article
8. Childhood self-control forecasts the pace of midlife aging and preparedness for old age.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021
   Article
9. Executive Functions in Social Context: Implications for Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Supporting Developmental Trajectories.Annual review of developmental psychology · 2021
   Article
10. Same Data Set, Different Conclusions: Preschool Delay of Gratification Predicts Later Behavioral Outcomes in a Preregistered Study.Psychological science · 2020
    Article
11. Delay of gratification and adult outcomes: The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning.Child development
    Article

Corrections and comments

• Commented on by
  Controlling, Confounding, and Construct Clarity: Responding to Criticisms of "Revisiting the Marshmallow Test" by Doebel, Michaelson, and Munakata (2020) and Falk, Kosse, and Pinger (2020).2020
• Comment on
  Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes.2018

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Funding

Abstract

PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.

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