CC Image school by vazovsky flickr

RadioLab-

RadioLab.org – Your Future in a Marshmallow 

• One marshmallow now or two later with kids under 4
• No distraction in the room, isolation chamber
• Fist girl ate it after a few minutes, gave into her impulses
• Boy kicks table and freaks out the entire time, he still made it through the 20 minutes
• Boy is licking it and puts it back on the tray, some kids will try and cheat or get around it
• Once kids reach the age of age of 4 they get signifigantly 
• Kids lasted 7-8 mins on average
• Seemed to be a pattern, checked SAT scores and marshmallows and there was a correlation
• 210 SAT score difference between someone who waited 1 minute vs 20 minutes
• Kids who waited ended up as nice kids, respectful, successful kids
• Kids who didn’t ended up as trouble kids

This American Life-

Back to School 

• Cognitive development, is what schools emphasize now. That’s the current understanding
• Now it’s not just cognitive skills like math and IQ. Nobel prize winning james heckman puts together these groups together full of psychologists and economists
• He made a study, GED vs High School dropouts but highschool graduates are doing the best
• What skills did GED students not have and graduates did?
• Schools based everything off of skills you can get quantitative data for like math or english instead of basic things.
• Marshmallow test, took 4 year olds into room, if you want one you ring a bell, if you wait you get two. Huge correlation between success and how long they waited.
• Stress stops kids from non cognitive abilities. Poor communities don’t do worse because of money but of the stress they have.
• Kids who are better off don’t have the same stress as a poor kid.
• If you had a rough childhood you are 12 times more likely to commit suicide and 3 times more likely to get a heart disease. 
• When faced with fear your cognitive function shuts off and you get a fight or flight, emergency response. When said fear is constant it creates constant pathways in a kids brain, the stress will stay.
• If you’re in this fight or flight mode, you literally can’t learn. Your brain just shuts off and you go into a more primative state of mind.
• If you had 4 tragic events as a kid that would stress you out, you are 32 times more likely to have behavior problems in school.
• If mama rats lick baby rats for their fisrt weeks of life if they never see them again, that reduction of nervousness will help them for the rest of their lives.
• The United States has the highest dropout rate in the world