Bing och marshmallowtestet

Bing Nursery School is part of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. The school was established to provide a sound educational environment for young children, to provide a laboratory setting for research in child development, and to teach undergraduate and graduate students about children through observation and first-hand experience in the classroom. 

Footage of these experiments, which were conducted over several years,\nis poignant, as the kids struggle to delay gratification for just a\nlittle bit longer. Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn\naround so that they can't see the tray. Others start kicking the desk,\nor tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a\ntiny stuffed animal. One child, a boy with neatly parted hair, looks\ncarefully around the room to make sure that nobody can see him. Then he\npicks up an Oreo, delicately twists it apart, and licks off the white\ncream filling before returning the cookie to the tray, a satisfied look\non his face.

The classrooms were designed as working laboratories, with large\none-way mirrors that allowed researchers to observe the children. In\nFebruary, Jennifer Winters, the assistant director of the school,\nshowed me around the building. While the Bing is still an active center\nof research--the children quickly learn to ignore the students\nscribbling in notebooks--Winters isn't sure that Mischel's marshmallow\ntask could be replicated today. \"We recently tried to do a version of\nit, and the kids were very excited about having food in the game room,\"\nshe says. \"There are so many allergies and peculiar diets today that we\ndon't do many things with food.\"