“Think happy thoughts!”: Positive mood and delaying gratification in children

Conference item

• Activities designed to induce mood states in children (such as videos and recalling emotional memories) impact cognitive performance on a range of tasks (e.g. Tornare et al, 2016; Schnall et al, 2008).

• However, the mechanisms for such effects are often unclear, as mood inductions could impact several affective, motivational and cognitive processes.

• Self-regulation generally improves following positive mood inductions in children (Yates et al., 1981; Fry, 1977), and this could be due to changes in subjective mood, which can promote higher expectations for success (Horn & Arbuckle, 1988), or increases in distracting thoughts or behaviour that redirect attention away from desirable rewards (Mischel et al., 1972; Yates et al., 1981).

• In this study, we aimed to determine whether changes in subjective mood or distractive thoughts could account for improvements in delaying gratification following positive mood induction.

Authors: Turnbull, S; Carroll, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: British Psychological Society
• Host title: British Psychological Society Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference 2016
• Journal: British Psychological Society Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference 2016
• Publication date: 2016-09-14
• Acceptance date: 2016-05-20
• Event location: Belfast