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Abstract

Offering students immediate versus delayed reward choices is a well known method of measuring delay of gratification used by Mischel. In offering students a set of such choices the classroom teacher may question where to place the cut-off scores separating delay from non-delay. This dilemma is resolved by use of probabilities produced by a binomial distribution for a given set of scores. The probabilities will show the number of choices required for a student to be identified as delaying beyond chance. Some teachers may decide to substitute the estimation of a 60-sec. interval for the classic delayed reward task. This substitution was suggested by Spivack, Levine, and Sprigle in 1959 and confirmed by subsequent work.

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Two Methods for Teachers' Measurement of Impulse Control

Abstract

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