Delayed gratification

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification 

Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, is the resistance to the temptation of an immediate pleasure in the hope of obtaining a valuable and long-lasting reward in the long-term. In other words, delayed gratification describes the process that the subject undergoes when the subject resists the temptation of an immediate reward in preference for a later reward. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later. A growing body of literature has linked the ability to delay gratification to a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence.

A person's ability to delay gratification relates to other similar skills such as patience, impulse control, self-control and willpower, all of which are involved in self-regulation. Broadly, self-regulation encompasses a person's capacity to adapt the self as necessary to meet demands of the environment. Delaying gratification is the reverse of delay discounting, which is "the preference for smaller immediate rewards over larger but delayed rewards" and refers to the "fact that the subjective value of reward decreases with increasing delay to its receipt". It is theorized that the ability to choose delayed rewards is under the control of the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS).

Several factors can affect a person's ability to delay gratification. Cognitive strategies, such as the use of distracting or "cool" thoughts, can increase delay ability, as can neurological factors, such as strength of connections in the frontal-striatal pathway. Behavioral researchers have focused on the contingencies that govern choices to delay reinforcement, and have studied how to manipulate those contingencies in order to lengthen delay. Age plays a role too; children under five years old demonstrate a marked lack of delayed gratification ability and most commonly seek immediate gratification. A very small difference between males and females suggest that females may be better at delaying rewards. The ability to wait or seek immediate reinforcement is related to avoidance-related behaviors such as procrastination, and to other clinical diagnoses such as anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic theory, discussed the ego's role in balancing the immediate pleasure-driven desires of the id with the morality-driven choices of the superego. Funder and Block expanded psychoanalytic research on the topic, and found that impulsivity, or a lack of ego-control, has a stronger effect on one's ability to choose delayed rewards if a reward is more desirable. Finally, environmental and social factors play a role; for example, delay is affected by the self-imposed or external nature of a reward contingency, by the degree of task engagement required during the delay, by early mother-child relationship characteristics, by a person's previous experiences with unreliable promises of rewards (e.g., in poverty), and by contemporary sociocultural expectations and paradigms. Research on animals comprises another body of literature describing delayed gratification characteristics that are not as easily tested in human samples, such as ecological factors affecting the skill.

Background

Cognitive-affective processing system

One well-supported theory of self-regulation, called the Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS), suggests that delaying gratification results from an ability to use "cool" regulatory strategies (i.e., calm, controlled and cognitive strategies) over "hot regulatory strategies (i.e., emotional, impulsive, automatic reactions), when faced with provocation. In "hot" processing, a person thinks intently about the object causing temptation, and especially about its most appealing elements, and is subsequently less able to resist the immediate reward. The use of cool strategies can translate to more control over behavior. Effective "cool" strategies involve distraction and restructuring the perception of the tempting stimulus to make it seem less appealing. For example, in one study of pre-adolescent boys with behavioral problems, the boys showed a reduction in verbal and physical aggression when they used "cool" strategies, such as looking away or distracting themselves. The most effective type of distraction seems to be imagining another desirable reward, which takes attention away from the immediate temptations.

Stanford marshmallow experiment

The seminal research on delayed gratification – the now-famous "marshmallow experiment" – was conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960s and 1970s at Stanford University. Mischel and his colleagues were interested in strategies that preschool children used to resist temptation. They presented four-year-olds with a marshmallow and told the children that they had two options: (1) ring a bell at any point to summon the experimenter and eat the marshmallow, or (2) wait until the experimenter returned (about 15 minutes later), and earn two marshmallows. The message was: "small reward now, bigger reward later." Some children broke down and ate the marshmallow, whereas others were able to delay gratification and earn the coveted two marshmallows. In follow-up experiments, Mischel found that children were able to wait longer if they used certain "cool" distraction techniques (covering their eyes, hiding under the desk, singing songs, or imagining pretzels instead of the marshmallow in front of them), or if they changed the way they thought about the marshmallow (focusing on its similarity to a cotton ball, rather than on its gooey, delectable taste).

The children who waited longer, when re-evaluated as teenagers and adults, demonstrated a striking array of advantages over their peers. As teenagers, they had higher SAT scores, social competence, self-assuredness and self-worth, and were rated by their parents as more mature, better able to cope with stress, more likely to plan ahead, and more likely to use reason. They were less likely to have conduct disorders or high levels of impulsivity, aggressiveness and hyperactivity. As adults, the high delayers were less likely to have drug problems or other addictive behaviors, get divorced, or be overweight. Each minute that a preschooler was able to delay gratification translated to a .2% reduction in Body Mass Index 30 years later.

Each of these positive outcomes requires some ability to forgo short-term reward in favor of a higher payoff in the future. The ability to delay gratification also appears to be a buffer against rejection sensitivity (the tendency to be anxious when anticipating interpersonal rejection). In a 20-year follow-up of the marshmallow experiment, individuals with vulnerability to high rejection sensitivity who had shown strong delay of gratification abilities as preschoolers had higher self-esteem and self-worth and more adaptive coping skills, in comparison to the individuals who had high rejection sensitivity but low delay of gratification as four-year-olds. These compelling longitudinal findings converge with other studies showing a similar pattern: The ability to resist temptation early in life translates to persistent benefits across settings.

Forty years after the first marshmallow test studies, neuroimaging data has shed light on the neural correlates of delayed gratification. A team led by B. J. Casey, of Cornell University, recruited 59 of the original participants – who are now in their mid-40s – and gave them a delayed gratification task. Instead of resisting marshmallows, these adults were instructed to suppress responses to images of happy faces, but not to neutral or fearful faces. Those who had been high delayers as pre-schoolers were more successful at controlling their impulses in response to the emotional faces (i.e., not pressing the button in response to happy faces), suggesting that the high delayers continued to show better ability to dampen or resist impulses. Casey and colleagues also scanned the brains of 26 participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they completed the task. The researchers hypothesized that high delayers would be more likely to use "cool" regulation strategies to control their responses, which would manifest as activation of the right prefrontal cortex, whereas low delayers would use "hot" strategies, which would activate the ventral striatum, an area also linked to addiction. Indeed, results showed this differential brain activity. This mirrors other fMRI research of delayed gratification conducted by Noah Shamosh and Jeremy Gray, of Yale University, demonstrating that individuals who chose larger delayed rewards over smaller immediate rewards (in hypothetical situations) showed greater brain activation in the anterior prefrontal cortex.

Factors affecting one's ability

Neurocognitive factors

The way that a person frames a situation heavily influences a decision's outcome. Research on "hot" and "cool" strategies suggests that when children cognitively represent what they are waiting for as a real reward by focusing on the reward's arousing, "hot" qualities (taste, smell, sound, feel, etc.) their self-control and delay of gratification decreases, while directing attention to a symbol of the reward by focusing on its abstract, "cool" qualities (shape, color, number, etc.), can enhance self-control and increase the delay. Optimal self-control and the longest delay to gratification can be achieved by directing attention to a competing item, especially the arousing, "hot" qualities of a competing item. For example, delays are increased when thinking about the taste and smell of popcorn while waiting to eat candy. This illustrates an individual's ability to manipulate their cognitive representation of external stimuli for goal-directed purposes.

Delaying gratification is the same as controlling the impulse for immediate gratification, which requires cognitive control. The ventral striatum, located in the midbrain, is the part of the limbic system that is the reward center as well as a pleasure center. The limbic system will always react to the potential for instant pleasure. To override this instinct, the prefrontal cortex, which is also associated with reasoning and rational thought, must be active. The prefrontal cortex is also the part of the brain that determines the focus of a person's attention, which enables a better framing that facilitates delayed gratification. During adolescence and early adulthood, the prefrontal cortex develops and matures to become more complicated and connected with the rest of the brain. Older children and adults find the deferment-of-gratification tasks easier than do young children for this reason. However, the relative ability to defer gratification remains stable throughout development. Children who can better control impulses grow up to be adults who also have better control. Practicing deferred gratification is quite beneficial to cognitive abilities throughout life.

Behavioral factors

Behaviorists focus on the acquisition and teaching of delayed gratification, and have developed therapeutic techniques for increasing ability to delay. Behavior analysts capitalize on the effective principles of reinforcement when shaping behavior by making rewards contingent on the person's current behavior, which promotes learning a delay of gratification. It is important to note that for a behavior modification regimen to succeed, the reward must have some value to the participant. Without a reward that is meaningful, providing delayed or immediate gratification serves little purpose, as the reward is not a strong reinforcer of the desired behavior.

Behavior theorists see delaying gratification as an adaptive skill. It has been shown that learning to delay gratification promotes positive social behavior, such as sharing and positive peer interactions. For example, students who learn to delay gratification are better able to complete their assigned activities. To put it simply, if someone undertakes an activity with the promise of a delayed reward after, the task's completion becomes more likely.

Behavioral researchers have found that a choice for instant versus delayed gratification is influenced by several factors including whether the reward is negative or positive reinforcement. A past study by Solnick et al., focused on an experiment where the main concentrations were time added to both conditions and the preference of the participants with experiencing a loud noise for variable amounts of time: 15, 30, 60, and 90 seconds. The buttons to turn off the noise were manipulated by one button turning off the noise for a short amount of time and the other turning the noise off for an extended time. The participants were found to be more willing to turn off the noise immediately for 90 seconds rather than turning it off for the 120 seconds after a 60-second delay was issued. Findings illustrate that participants chose not to delay their gratification for the relief of noise but rather instantly silence it for a shorter amount of time.

Individual thresholds for delay

In a 2011 study, researchers tested to see if people would willingly choose between instant and delayed gratification by offering them a set amount of (hypothetical) money that they could receive presently, or telling them they could wait a month for more money. Results suggested that willingness to delay gratification depended on the amount of money being offered, but also showed wide individual variation in the threshold of later reward that was motivating enough to forgo the immediate reward. The subjective value of a reward can also stem from the way one describes the potential reward. As prospect theory states, people are heavily loss-averse. People tend to value a commodity more when it is considered to be something that can be lost or given up than when it is evaluated as a potential gain.

Duration of time delay

The duration of time until an eventual reward also affects participants' choice of immediate or delayed gratification. A 2001 study demonstrated that if a reward will not be granted for an extensive amount of time, such as 180–300 months (15–25 years), the monetary amount of the reward is inconsequential; instead, the bulk of the participants choose the immediate reward, even if their delayed reward would be quite large. Delayed gratification has its limits, and a delay can only be so long before it is judged to be not worth the effort it takes to wait.

Behavioral training

Applications in classroom settings

In a Year 3 elementary classroom in South Wales a teacher was having difficulty keeping three girls on task during designated private study times. The teacher reached for aid from behavior analysts, and a delayed gratification behavior modification plan was put into place. The study gave limits on the numbers of questions the children could ask, and if they did not exceed the limit, they were given tokens for rewards. The token economy for rewards is an example of delayed gratification, by way of cool processing. Instead of having the girls focus on attention-seeking behaviors that distracted the teacher and the students, the teacher had them focus on how many questions they had, and if they needed to ask for help from the teacher. They also focused on gaining tokens rather than focusing on the final reward, which increased their delays. By giving the children this goal and the promise of positive reinforcement for good behavior, the girls dropped their rate of question-asking and attention-seeking.

Applications to ADHD

Compared to neurotypical children, those with ADHD generally demonstrate greater impulsivity by being influenced by reward immediacy and quality more than by the frequency of reward and effort to obtain it. However, researchers have empirically shown that these impulsive behavior patterns can be changed through the implementation of a simple self-control training procedure in which reinforcer immediacy competes with the frequency, quantity or saliency of the reward. One study demonstrated that any verbal activity while waiting for reinforcement increases delay to gratification in participants with ADHD. In another study, three children diagnosed with ADHD and demonstrating impulsivity were trained to prefer reward rate and saliency more than immediacy through manipulation of the quality of the reinforcers and by systematically increasing the delay with a changing-criterion design. Post-assessment of the children illustrated that self-control can transfer to untrained dimensions of reinforcement.

Across the lifespan

At birth, infants are unable to wait for their wants and needs to be met and exhibit a defining lack of impulse control. With age, developing children are able to retain impulsivity but also gain control over their immediate desires and are increasingly able to prolong gratification. Developmental psychologists study the progression of impulse control and delay of gratification over the lifespan, including deficiencies in development that are closely related to attention deficits and behavior problems.

Children under five years old display the least effective strategies for delaying gratification, such as looking at the reward and thinking about its arousing features. By 5 years old, most children are able to demonstrate better self-control by recognizing the counter-productivity of focusing on the reward. Five-year-olds often choose instead to actively distract themselves or even use self-instructions to remind themselves of the contingency that waiting produces a reward of a greater value. Between 8 and 13 years old, children develop the cognitive ability to differentiate and employ abstract versus arousing thoughts in order to distract their minds from the reward and thereby increase the delay. Once delaying strategies are developed, the capacity to resist temptation is relatively stable throughout adulthood. Preschoolers' performance on delayed gratification tasks correlates with their adolescent performance on tasks designed to measure similar constructs and processing, which parallels the corresponding development of willpower and the fronto-striatal circuit (neural pathways that connect the frontal lobe to other brain regions). Declines in self-regulation and impulse control in old age predict corresponding declines in reward-delaying strategies, specifically reduced temporal discounting due to a decrease in cooling strategies.

Effects of gender

Throughout 33 studies on gender differences, a small significant effect (r = .06) has been found indicating that a base-rate of 10% more females are able to choose delayed rewards than males, which is the typical percentage of difference found between the sexes on measures such as personality or social behavior. This effect may be related to the slight gender differences found in delay discounting (i.e., minimizing the value of a delayed reward) and higher levels of impulsivity and inattention in boys. Further studies are needed to analyze if this minute difference begins at a certain age (e.g., puberty) or if it has a stable magnitude throughout the lifespan. Some researchers suggest this gender difference may correspond with a mother's tendency to sacrifice her wants and needs in order to meet those of her child more frequently than a father does.

Clinical factors

Contemporary clinical psychology perspectives

Self-control has been called the "master virtue" by clinical and social psychologists, suggesting that the ability to delay gratification plays a critical role in a person's overall psychological adjustment. People with better ability to delay gratification report higher wellbeing, self-esteem and openness to experience, as well as more productive ways of responding to anger and other provocations. Early delay ability has been shown to protect against the development of a variety of emotional vulnerabilities later in life, such as aggression and features of borderline personality disorder. Meanwhile, many maladaptive coping skills that characterize mental illness entail a difficulty delaying gratification. The tendency to choose short-term rewards at the expense of longer-term benefits permeates many forms of psychopathology.

A growing body of research suggests that self-control is akin to a muscle that can be strengthened through practice. In other words, self-control abilities are malleable, a fact that can be a source of hope for those who struggle with this skill. In psychotherapy, treatment for impulse-control issues often involves teaching individuals to realize the downsides of acting on immediate urges and in turn to practice delaying gratification. In anxiety disorders, this process occurs through exposure to a feared situation – which is very uncomfortable at first, but eventually becomes tolerable and even trains a person's mind and body that these situations are less threatening than originally feared. Exposure therapy is only effective if an individual can delay gratification and resist the urge to escape the situation early on. To shed insight on the tradeoff between short- and long-term gains, therapists might also help individuals construct a pro-con list of a certain behavior, with sections for short-term and long-term outcomes. For maladaptive coping behaviors such as self-injury, substance use or avoidance, there are generally no long-term pros. Meanwhile, abstinence from acting on a harmful urge (i.e., delayed gratification) generally results in long-term benefits. This realization can be a powerful impetus for change.

Externalizing disorders

Externalizing disorders (i.e., acting-out disorders) show a clearer link to delayed gratification, since they more directly involve deficits in impulse control. For example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and aggressive behavior are associated with difficulty delaying gratification in children and adolescents, as are substance abuse, gambling, and other addictive behaviors in adolescents and adults. In a 2010 study, teenagers and young adults with stronger abilities to delay gratification were less likely to drink alcohol, or to smoke cigarettes or cannabis. A 2011 study found that the contrast in delayed gratification between children with and without ADHD was no longer significant after statistically controlling for IQ (in other words, ADHD was not associated with delayed gratification above and beyond the influence of IQ). This may stem from the high correlation between intelligence and delayed gratification, and suggests that the tie between delayed gratification and ADHD could benefit from more investigation.

Internalizing disorders

Difficulty delaying gratification also plays a role in internalizing disorders like anxiety and depression. A hallmark behavior in anxiety is avoidance of feared or anxiety-provoking situations. By seeking the immediate relief that comes with avoidance, a person is succumbing to the pull of instant gratification over the larger reward from overcoming the fear and anxiety that caused the avoidance. Procrastination, which is often a reflection of anxiety, is a clear example: a person avoids a dreaded task by engaging in a more enjoyable immediate activity instead. Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a more jarring case of this anxiety-related struggle to delay gratification; someone with OCD is unable to resist compulsions that temporarily mitigate the torture of obsessive thoughts, even though these compulsions do not banish the obsessions in the long run. One experiment, however, did not find any significant differences between samples with OCD and healthy controls in delayed gratification, while finding substantially improved delayed gratification among those with obsessive–compulsive personality disorder. Depression is also associated with lower capacity to delay gratification, though the direction of cause and effect is not clear. A depressed person who has difficulty pushing themself to engage in previously enjoyed activities is (deliberately or not) prioritizing short-term comfort and is demonstrating an impaired ability to delay gratification. There is evidence that individuals who engage in deliberate self-harm (i.e., cut themselves) are less able to tolerate emotional distress but are more able to tolerate physical pain. Thus it is argued that they injure themselves because they cannot delay gratification and need a way to end emotional pain quickly.

Psychoanalytic drives and impulses

Sigmund Freud viewed the struggle to delay gratification as a person's efforts to overcome the instinctive, libidinal drive of the id. According to classic psychoanalytic theory, a person's psyche is composed of the id, ego and superego. The id is driven by the pleasure principle: it wants physical pleasure, and it wants it now. The ego, operating under the reality principle, serves to moderate the id's desire for instant gratification against the superego, which is guided by a person's internalized sense of morality. According to psychoanalytic theory, a person with difficulty delaying gratification is plagued by intrapsychic conflict – the ego cannot adequately regulate the battle between the id and the superego – and experiences psychological distress, often in the form of anxiety or "neurosis".

Other psychoanalytic researchers describe a more nuanced, and less universally positive, view of delayed gratification. David C. Funder and Jack Block theorized that a person's tendency to delay, or not delay, gratification is just one element of a broader construct called ego control, defined as a person's ability to modulate or control impulses. Ego control "ranges from ego undercontrol at one end to ego overcontrol at the other", according to Funder. These tendencies are thought to be relatively stable in each individual, such that someone who tends toward undercontrol will "grab whatever rewards are immediately available even at the cost of long-term gain" and someone who tends toward overcontrol will "delay or even forgo pleasures even when they can be had without cost". By this view, delay of gratification may be adaptive in certain settings, but inappropriate or even costly in other settings.

Funder and Block draw a distinction between the ego-control model, in which delayed gratification is seen as a general tendency to contain motivational impulses (whether or not it is adaptive in a specific instance), and the ego-resiliency model (supported by Mischel's research), in which delayed gratification is seen as a skill that arises only when it is adaptive. To tease apart these models, Funder and Block explored the association between ego control, ego resiliency, IQ and delayed gratification in adolescents. The adolescents had the choice between being paid $4 at each of six study sessions or delaying their payment until the last session, in which case they would also earn an additional $4 of "interest".

The results supported both models of delayed gratification. The teens' tendency to delay gratification was indeed associated with IQ and with ego resiliency (e.g., higher delayers were rated as more responsible, consistent, likable, sympathetic, generous; less hostile, moody, self-indulgent, rebellious), but was also independently associated with ego control (e.g., higher delayers were rated as "tends toward over-control of needs and impulses" and "favors conservative values in a number of areas"). The researchers noted that individual differences in ego control (i.e., overall impulsivity) may play a larger role in delayed gratification when the incentives are larger and more motivating.

Writing in 1998, Funder described delayed gratification as a "mixed bag". He concluded: "Participants who exhibited the most delay were not just 'better' at self-control, but in a sense they seemed unable to avoid it. ... Delayers are in general smart and well-adjusted, but they also tend to be somewhat overcontrolled and unnecessarily inhibited."

Environmental and social factors

Who is in control

Factors affecting one's ability to delay gratification depend on whether the delay contingency is self-imposed (delay can be terminated at the will of the person waiting) or externally imposed by another person, institution or circumstance. When the contingency is self-imposed, the physical presence of the reward seems to aid in delaying gratification. On the other hand, when the delay is externally imposed, children are not able to wait as long when the reward is present, suggesting greater frustration under these circumstances.

Task engagement

Engaging in work or an assigned task can generate an effective distraction from a reward and enable a person to wait for a longer delay, as long as the reward is not being flaunted. Having the reward present during work (and easily accessible) creates a negative frustration—akin to teasing—rather than providing motivation. For example, a child who can see other children playing outside while the child is finishing their homework will be less motivated to wait for their turn for recess. Another factor work and task engagement adds to the delay of gratification is that if the work is interesting and has some reinforcing quality inherent to it, then attention to the reward will reduce work productivity since it becomes a distraction to the work rather than a motivation to finish it.

Mother–child relationship

The more positive emotions and behavior that a 12- to 24-month-old toddler displays when coping with separation from a parent, the better they are 3.5 years later at using cooling strategies in order to defer gratification. This suggests that the emotional skills and processes required for coping with social and interpersonal frustrations are similar to those utilized for coping with the aggravation of goal-directed delay of gratification. Maternal attachment also influences the development of a child's ability to delay gratification. An interaction has been found between a mother's level of control and how close a child stays to the mother while exploring the environment.

Children who have controlling mothers and explore their environment at a far distance from her are able to employ more cooling strategies and prefer rewards that come later. Similarly, children who stay close to a non-controlling mothers also use more cool strategies and demonstrate longer delays. This suggests that some children of controlling mothers have better learned how to distract themselves from or effectively avoid intrusive stimuli, although additional effects on their emotional competency are speculated but unknown. A greater capacity to delay gratification by using effective attentional strategies is also seen in preschoolers whose mothers had been responsive and supportive during particularly stressful times of self-regulation when the child was a toddler, indicating that maternal responsiveness during highly demanding times is crucial for the development of self-regulation, self-control and emotional competency.

Reliability of gratification

Researchers have investigated whether the reliability of the reward affects one's ability to delay gratification. Reliability of the reward refers to how well the reward received matches what the person was expecting or promised in terms of quality and quantity. For example, researchers told children that they would receive better art supplies if they waited. After the children successfully waited for the reward, better supplies could not be "found" and so they had to use the crayons and stickers that were in poor shape. Comparing these children to ones who received their promised rewards reliably revealed different results on subsequent Marshmallow tests measuring delayed gratification. Children who had learned that the researcher's promise was unreliable quickly succumbed to eating the marshmallow, waiting only an average of three minutes. Conversely, children who had learned that the researcher was reliable were able to wait an average of 12 minutes, with many of them waiting the full 15 minutes for the researcher to return in order to double the reward to two marshmallows.

Genetics and evolution

Evolutionary theory can argue against the selection of the deferred gratification trait since there are both costs and risks associated with delaying gratification behavior. One such cost is the basic opportunity cost associated with time spent waiting. While waiting, individuals lose time that could be used to find other food. Seeking high calorie food conveys a clear evolutionary advantage. There are also two risks associated with being patient. First, there is a risk that another animal might get to the food first, also known as an interruption risk. Second, there is the risk that the chance to get the reward will be cut short, perhaps by a predator, also known as a termination risk. These costs and risks create situations in which the fitness of the individual is threatened. There are several examples that show how reward delay occurs in the real world. For example, animals that eat fruit have the option of eating unripe fruit right away, or waiting, delaying gratification, until it becomes ripe. The interruption risk plays a part here, because if the individual forgoes the unripe fruit, there is a chance that another individual may come along and get to it first. Also, in extractive foraging, such as with nuts and shellfish, the outer shell creates a delay. However, animals that can store food and defer eating are more likely to survive during harsh conditions, and thus delaying gratification may also incur an evolutionary advantage.

It is likely that there is a strong genetic component to deferred gratification, though no direct link has been established. Since many complex genetic interactions are necessary for neurons to perform the simplest tasks, it is hard to isolate one gene to study this behavior. For this same reason, multiple genes are likely responsible for deferred gratification. Further research is necessary to discover the genetic corollaries to delayed gratification.

Animal studies

Delayed gratification or deferred gratification is an animal behavior that can be linked to delay discounting, ecological factors, individual fitness, and neurobiological mechanisms. Research for this behavior has been conducted with animals such as capuchin monkeys, tamarins, marmosets, rats, and pigeons.

Delay discounting

When animals are faced with a choice to either wait for a reward, or receive a reward right away, the discounting of the reward is hyperbolic. As the length of time of waiting for a reward increases, the reward is discounted at a gradual rate. Empirical data have suggested that exponential discounting, rewards discounting at a constant rate per unit of waiting time, only occurs when there are random interruptions in foraging. Discounting can also be related to the risk sensitivity of animals. Rather than relating risk to delay, risk sensitivity acts as a function of delay discounting.

In a study conducted by Haden and Platt, macaque monkeys were given the choice of a medium reward that they knew they would receive, versus a more risky choice. The riskier choice would reward the monkey with a large reward fifty percent of the time, and a small reward the other fifty percent. The ultimate payoff was the same, but the monkeys preferred the riskier choice. They speculated that the monkeys did not see their action as risky, but rather as a large, delayed reward. They reasoned that the monkeys viewed the large reward as certain: if they did not get the large reward the first time around, they would eventually get it, but at a longer delay.

To test for this theory, they gave the same test while varying the time between the opportunities to choose a reward. They found that as the interval increased, the number of times that the monkeys chose the more risky reward decreased. While this occurred in macaque monkeys, the varying interval time did not affect pigeons' choices in another study. This suggests that research looking into varying risk sensitivity of different species is needed. When provided a choice between a small, short delay reward, and a large, long delay reward, there is an impulsive preference for the former. Additionally, as the delay time for the small/short and large/long reward increases, there is a shift in preference toward the larger, delayed reward. This evidence only supports hyperbolic discounting, not exponential.

Ecological factors

Although predicting reward preference seems simple when using empirical models, there are a number of ecological factors that seem to affect the delayed gratification behavior of animals. In real world situations, "discounting makes sense because of the inherent uncertainty of future payoffs".

One study looked at how reward discounting is context specific. By differing the time and space between small and large rewards, they were able to test how these factors affected the decision making in tamarins and marmosets. They showed that tamarins will travel longer distances for larger food rewards, but will not wait as long as marmosets. Conversely, marmosets will wait longer, but will not travel as far. They then concluded that this discounting behavior directly correlates to the normal feeding behavior of species. The tamarins feed over large distances, looking for insects. Capturing and eating insects requires a quick and impulsive decision and action. The marmosets, on the other hand, eat tree sap, which takes more time to secrete, but does not require that the marmosets to cover large distances.

The physiological similarities between humans and other animals, especially primates, have led to more comparative research between the two groups. Future research with animal models then can expand our own understanding of how people make decisions about instant versus delayed gratification in the real world.

Habituation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation 

Habituation is a form of non-associative learning in which an innate (non-reinforced) response to a stimulus decreases after repeated or prolonged presentations of that stimulus. Responses that habituate include those that involve the intact organism (e.g., full-body startle response) or those that involve only components of the organism (e.g., habituation of neurotransmitter release from in vitro Aplysia sensory neurons). The broad ubiquity of habituation across all biologic phyla has resulted in it being called "the simplest, most universal form of learning...as fundamental a characteristic of life as DNA." Functionally-speaking, by diminishing the response to an inconsequential stimulus, habituation is thought to free-up cognitive resources to other stimuli that are associated with biologically important events (i.e., punishment/reward). For example, organisms may habituate to repeated sudden loud noises when they learn these have no consequences. A progressive decline of a behavior in a habituation procedure may also reflect nonspecific effects such as fatigue, which must be ruled out when the interest is in habituation. Habituation is clinically relevant, as a number of neuropsychiatric conditions, including autism, schizophrenia, migraine, and Tourette's, show reductions in habituation to a variety of stimulus-types both simple (tone) and complex (faces).

Drug habituation

There is an additional connotation to the term habituation which applies to psychological dependency on drugs, and is included in several online dictionaries. A team of specialist from the World Health Organization assembled in 1957 to address the problem of drug addiction and adopted the term "drug habituation" to distinguish some drug-use behaviors from drug addiction. According to the WHO lexicon of alcohol and drug terms, habituation is defined as "becoming accustomed to any behavior or condition, including psychoactive substance use". By 1964 the America Surgeon's General report on smoking and health included four features that characterize drug habituation according to WHO: 1) "a desire (but not a compulsion) to continue taking the drug for the sense of improved well-being which it engenders"; 2) "little or no tendency to increase the dose"; 3) "some degree of psychic dependence on the effect of the drug, but absence of physical dependence and hence of an abstinence syndrome"; 4) "detrimental effects, if any, primarily on the individual". However, also in 1964, a committee from the World Health Organization once again convened and decided the definitions of drug habituation and drug addiction were insufficient, replacing the two terms with "drug dependence". Substance dependence is the preferred term today when describing drug-related disorders, whereas the use of the term drug habituation has declined substantially. This is not to be confused with true habituation to drugs, wherein repeated doses have an increasingly diminished effect, as is often seen in addicts or persons taking painkillers frequently.

Characteristics

Habituation as a form of non-associative learning can be distinguished from other behavioral changes (e.g., sensory/neural adaptation, fatigue) by considering the characteristics of habituation that have been identified over several decades of research. The characteristics first described by Thompson and Spencer have recently been updated and include the following:

Repeated presentation of a stimulus will cause a decrease in reaction to the stimulus. Habituation is also proclaimed to be a form of implicit learning, which is commonly the case with continually repeated stimuli. This characteristic is consistent with the definition of habituation as a procedure, but to confirm habituation as a process, additional characteristics must be demonstrated. Also observed is spontaneous recovery. That is, a habituated response to a stimulus recovers (increases in magnitude) when a significant amount of time (hours, days, weeks) passes between stimulus presentations.

"Potentiation of habituation" is observed when tests of spontaneous recovery are given repeatedly. In this phenomenon, the decrease in responding that follows spontaneous recovery becomes more rapid with each test of spontaneous recovery. Also noted was that an increase in the frequency of stimulus presentation (i.e., shorter interstimulus interval) will increase the rate of habituation. Furthermore, continued exposure to the stimulus after the habituated response has plateaued (i.e., show no further decrement) may have additional effects on subsequent tests of behavior such as delaying spontaneous recovery. The concepts of stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination will be observed. Habituation to an original stimulus will also occur to other stimuli that are similar to the original stimulus (stimulus generalization). The more similar the new stimulus is to the original stimulus, the greater the habituation that will be observed. When a subject shows habituation to a new stimulus that is similar to the original stimulus but not to a stimulus that is different from the original stimulus, then the subject is showing stimulus discrimination. (For example, if one was habituated to the taste of lemon, their responding would increase significantly when presented with the taste of lime). Stimulus discrimination can be used to rule out sensory adaptation and fatigue as an alternative explanation of the habituation process.

Another observation mentioned is when a single introduction of a different stimulus late in the habituation procedure when responding to the eliciting stimulus has declined can cause an increase in the habituated response. This increase in responding is temporary and is called "dishabituation" and always occurs to the original eliciting stimulus (not to the added stimulus). Researchers also use evidence of dishabituation to rule out sensory adaptation and fatigue as alternative explanations of the habituation process. Habituation of dishabituation can occur. The amount of dishabituation that occurs as a result of the introduction of a different stimulus can decrease after repeated presentation of the "dishabituating" stimulus.

Some habituation procedures appear to result in a habituation process that last days or weeks. This is considered long-term habituation. It persists over long durations of time (i.e., shows little or no spontaneous recovery). Long-term habituation can be distinguished from short-term habituation which is identified by the nine characteristics listed above.

Biological mechanisms

Habituation can refer to a decrease in behavior, subjective experience, or synaptic transmission. The changes in synaptic transmission that occur during habituation have been well-characterized in the Aplysia gill and siphon withdrawal reflex.

Habituation has been shown in essentially every species of animal and at least, in one species of plants (Mimosa pudica), in isolated neuronally-differentiated cell-lines, as well as in quantum perovskite. The experimental investigation of simple organisms such as the large protozoan Stentor coeruleus provides an understanding of the cellular mechanisms that are involved in the habituation process.

Neuroimaging

Within psychology, habituation has been studied through different forms of neuroimaging like PET scan and fMRI. Habituation is observed after repeated presentations of stimuli. Within fMRI, the stimuli's effect is measured using blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals. Long-term decreases of the BOLD signal are interpreted as habituation, and long-term increases of the BOLD signal are interpreted as sensitization.

The amygdala is one of the most-studied areas of the brain in relation to habituation. A common approach is to observe the visual processing of facial expressions. A study by Breiter and colleagues used fMRI scans to identify which areas of the brain habituate and at what rate. Their results showed that the human amygdala responds and rapidly habituates preferentially to fearful facial expressions over neutral ones. They also observed significant amygdala signal changes in response to happy faces over neutral faces.

Blackford, Allen, Cowan, and Avery (2012) compared the effect of an extremely inhibited temperament and an extremely uninhibited temperament on habituation. Their study found that over repeated presentations individuals with an uninhibited temperament demonstrated habituation in both the amygdala and hippocampus, whereas participants with an inhibited temperament demonstrated habituation in neither brain region. The researchers suggest that this failure to habituate reflects a social learning deficit in individuals with an extremely inhibited temperament, which is a possible mechanism for a higher risk of social anxiety.

Debate about learning-status

Although habituation has been regarded as a learning process by some as early as 1887, its learning status remained controversial up until the 1920s - 1930s. While conceding that reflexes may "relax" or otherwise decrease with repeated stimulation, the "invariance doctrine" stipulated that reflexes should not remain constant and that variable reflexes were a pathological manifestation. Indeed, air pilots who showed habituation of post-rotational nystagmus reflex were sometimes ejected from or not recruited for service for World War I: on the grounds that a variable reflex response indicated either a defective vestibular apparatus or a lack of vigilance. Eventually, however, more research from the medical and scientific communities concluded that stimulus-dependent variability reflexes is clinically normal. The opposition to the considering habituation a form of learning was also based on the assumption that learning processes must produce novel behavioral responses and must occur in the cerebral cortex. Non-associative forms of learning such as habituation (and sensitization) do not produce novel (conditioned) responses but rather diminish a pre-existing (innate) responses and often are shown to depend on peripheral (non-cerebral) synaptic changes in the sensory-motor pathway. Most modern learning theorists, however, consider any behavioral change that occurs as a result of experience to be learning, so long as it cannot be accounted for by motor fatigue, sensory adaption, developmental changes or damage.

Criteria for verifying a response-decline as learning

Importantly, systematic response-declines can be produced by non-learning factors such as sensory adaptation (obstruction of stimulus detection), motor fatigue, or damage. Three diagnostic criteria are used to distinguish response-declines produced by these non-learning factors and response-declines produced by habituation (learning) processes. These are:

1. Recovery by Dishabituation
2. Sensitivity of Spontaneous Recovery to Rate-of-Stimulation
3. Stimulus-specificity

Early studies relied on the demonstration of 1) Recovery by Dishabituation (the brief recovery of the response to the eliciting stimulus when another stimulus is added) to distinguish habituation from sensory adaptation and fatigue. More recently, 2) Sensitivity of Spontaneous Recovery to Rate-of-Stimulation and 3) Stimulus-specificity have been used as experimental evidence for the habituation process. Spontaneous Recovery is sensitive to spontaneous recovery, showing recovery that is inversely correlated with the amount of response-decline. This is the opposite of what would be expected if sensory adaption or motor fatigue were the cause of the response-decline. Sensory adaptation (or neural adaptation) occurs when an organism can no longer detect the stimulus as efficiently as when first presented and motor fatigue occurs when an organism is able to detect the stimulus but can no longer respond efficiently. Stimulus-specificity stipulates that the response-decline is not general (due to motor fatigue) but occurs only to the original stimulus that was repeated. If a response-decline shows 1) dishabituation, 2) spontaneous recovery that is inversely correlated with the extent of decline, and/or 3) stimulus-specificity, then habituation learning is supported.

Despite the ubiquity of habituation and its modern acceptance as a genuine form of learning it has not enjoyed the same focus within research as other forms of learning. On this topic, the animal psychologist James McConnell said “...nobody cares…much about habituation”). It has been suggested that the apathy held towards habituation is due to 1) resistance from traditional learning theorists maintain memory requires reproduction of propositional/linguistic content; 2) resistance from behaviorists who maintain that "true" learning requires the development of a novel response (whereas habituation is a decrease in a pre-existing response); 3) the behavioral measure of habituation (i.e., a response-decline) is very susceptible to confound by non-learning factors (e.g., fatigue) which, therefore, make it more difficult to study (reviewed in).

Theories

Various models have been proposed to account for habituation including the Stimulus-Model Comparator theory formulated by Evgeny Sokolov, the Groves and Thompson dual-process theory, the SOP (Standard Operating Procedures/Sometimes Opponent Process) model formulated by Allan Wagner and the multiple-time-scales theory.

Stimulus-model comparator theory

The stimulus-model comparator theory emerged from the research of Sokolov who used the orienting response as the cornerstone of his studies, and operationally defining the orienting response as EEG activity. Orienting responses are heightened sensitivity experienced by an organism when exposed to a new or changing stimulus. Orienting responses can result in overt, observable behaviors as well as psychophysiological responses such as EEG activity and undergo habituation with repeated presentation of the eliciting stimulus. The Sokolov model assumes that when a stimulus is experienced several times, the nervous system creates a model of the expected stimulus (a stimulus model). With additional presentations of the stimulus, the experienced stimulus is compared with the stimulus model. If the experienced stimulus matches the stimulus model, responding is inhibited. At first the stimulus model is not a very good representation of the presented stimulus, and thus responding continues because of this mismatch. With additional presentations the stimulus model is improved, there is no longer a mismatch, and responding is inhibited causing habituation. However, if the stimulus is changed so that it no longer matches the stimulus model, the orienting response is no longer inhibited. Sokolov locates the stimulus model in the cerebral cortex.

Dual-process theory

The Groves and Thompson dual-process theory of habituation posits that two separate processes exist in the central nervous system that interacts to produce habituation. The two distinct processes are a habituation process and a sensitization process. The dual-process theory argues that all noticeable stimuli will elicit both of these processes and that the behavioral output will reflect a summation of both processes. The habituation process is decremental, whereas the sensitization process is incremental enhancing the tendency to respond. Thus when the habituation process exceeds the sensitization process behavior shows habituation, but if the sensitization process exceeds the habituation process, behavior shows sensitization. Groves and Thompson hypothesize the existence of two neural pathways: an "S-R pathway" involved with the habituation process, and a "state pathway" involved with sensitization. The state system is seen as equivalent to a general state of arousal.

Multiple Time-scales theory

Habituation to closely spaced stimuli is faster and more complete than to widely spaced stimuli, but recovery is also more rapid (rate sensitivity). Staddon and Higa showed that a 2-unit, cascaded-integrator dynamic model can explain in detail an extensive data set on rate-sensitive habituation in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Many apparently complex properties of habituation and learning dynamics may reflect interactions among a small number of processes with different time scales.

Examples of the habituation process in animals and humans

Habituation has been observed in an enormously wide range of species from motile single-celled organisms such as the amoeba and Stentor coeruleus to sea slugs to humans. Habituation processes are adaptive, allowing animals to adjust their innate behaviors to changes in their natural world. A natural animal instinct, for example, is to protect themselves and their territory from any danger and potential predators. An animal needs to respond quickly to the sudden appearance of a predator. What may be less obvious is the importance of defensive responses to the sudden appearance of any new, unfamiliar stimulus, whether it is dangerous or not. An initial defensive response to a new stimulus is important because if an animal fails to respond to a potentially dangerous unknown stimulus, the results could be deadly. Despite this initial, innate defensive response to an unfamiliar stimulus, the response becomes habituated if the stimulus repeatedly occurs but causes no harm. An example of this is the prairie dog habituating to humans. Prairie dogs give alarm calls when they detect a potentially dangerous stimulus. This defensive call occurs when any mammal, snake, or large bird approaches them. However, they habituate to noises, such as human footsteps, that occur repeatedly but result in no harm to them. If prairie dogs never habituate to nonthreatening stimuli, they would be constantly sending out alarm calls and wasting their time and energy. However, the habituation process in prairie dogs may depend on several factors including the particular defensive response. In one study that measured several different responses to the repeated presence of humans, the alarm calls of prairie dogs showed habituation whereas the behavior of escaping into their burrows showed sensitization.

Another example of the importance of habituation in the animal world is provided by a study with harbor seals. In one study researchers measured the responses of harbor seals to underwater calls of different types of killer whales. The seals showed a strong response when they heard the calls of mammal-eating killer whales. However, they did not respond strongly when hearing familiar calls of the local fish-eating population. The seals, therefore, are capable of habituating to the calls of harmless predators, in this case, harmless killer whales. While some researchers prefer to simply describe the adaptive value of observable habituated behavior, others find it useful to infer psychological processes from the observed behavior change. For example, habituation of aggressive responses in male bullfrogs has been explained as "an attentional or learning process that allows animals to form enduring mental representations of the physical properties of a repeated stimulus and to shift their focus of attention away from sources of irrelevant or unimportant stimulation".

Habituation of innate defensive behaviors is also adaptive in humans, such as habituation of a startle response to a sudden loud noise. But habituation is much more ubiquitous even in humans. An example of habituation that is an essential element of everyone's life is the changing response to food as it is repeatedly experienced during a meal. When people eat the same food during a meal, they begin to respond less to the food as they become habituated to the motivating properties of the food and decrease their consumption. Eating less during a meal is usually interpreted as reaching satiety or "getting full", but experiments suggest that habituation also plays an important role. Many experiments with animals and humans have shown that providing variety in a meal increases the amount that is consumed in a meal, most likely because habituation is stimulus-specific and because variety may introduce dishabituation effects. Food variety also slows the rate of habituation in children and may be an important contributing factor to the recent increases in obesity.

We also find that habituation is found in our emotional responses, called the opponent-process theory, proposed by researchers Richard Solomon and John Corbit (1974). It is known that responses by the subject tend to change by repetitively presenting certain stimuli. But concerning the opponent-process theory, some emotional reactions to the stimuli weaken (decrease) while others' reactions are strengthened (increase). Take, for example, that it is the end of the semester at your university. You have been worried about your grade for the entire semester and you need a grade of "A" on the final to pass the course. You study efficiently for the test and after taking it, you feel that you will receive a very high grade. But once you check the gradebook, you see that you did not get an "A" on your exam. Instead, you received a "C+". Now you are distraught and know that there is no other way to pass the course for the semester. After a few minutes you begin to calm down and by the next hour, you are back to your normal emotional state. This is an example of an emotional response explained by the opponent-process theory. It begins with an outside stimulus provoking an emotional reaction that increases rapidly until it is at its most intense (presumably after you learned that you did not receive a high letter grade). Gradually, your emotional state declines to a level lower than normal and eventually returns to neutral. This pattern coincides with two internal processes referred to as the a-process and b-process. The a-process, or "affective" response to a stimulus, is the initial emotional response one has and can be pleasant or unpleasant. The b-process is the after reaction and has a lower intensity than the a-process. The a-process is very fast-acting and ends as soon as the stimulus ends or is removed. Unlike the a-process, the b-process is much slower in returning to baseline. Concerning the definition of the opponent process theory—repeated presentations present habituation—the a-process does not necessarily change. It is the b-process that is strengthened instead and rises more quickly to reach the highest intensity, and much slower in attempting to return to baseline after the stimulus is removed. To sum it all up, with the opponent-process theory, repeated presentations of the same stimulus will result in habituation, where subjects show little to no reaction. It is the after-reaction that is much larger and prolonged, than if an initial reaction to a stimulus occurred.

Relevance to neuropsychiatry

Habituation abnormalities have been repeatedly observed in a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), fragile X syndrome, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette's syndrome (TS), and migraine. In human clinical studies, habituation is most often studied using the acoustic startle reflex; acoustic tones are delivered to participants through headphones and the subsequent eye-blink response is recorded directly by observation or by electromyography (EMG). Depending on the disorder, habituation phenomena have been implicated as a cause, symptom, or therapy. Reduced habituation is the most common habituation phenotype reported across neuropsychiatric disorders although enhanced habituation has been observed in HD and ADHD. It also appears that abnormal habituation is often predictive of symptom severity in several neuropsychiatric disorders, including ASD, PD, and HD. Moreover, there are instances where treatments that normalise the habituation-deficit also improve other associated symptoms. As a therapy, habituation processes have been hypothesized to underlie the efficacy of behavioural therapies (i.e. habit reversal training, exposure therapy) for TS and PTSD, although extinction processes may be operating instead.

Uses and challenges of the habituation procedure

Habituation procedures are used by researchers for many reasons. For example, in a study on aggression in female chimpanzees from a group known as the "Kasakela Chimpanzee Community", researchers habituated the chimpanzees by repeatedly exposing them to the presence of human beings. Their efforts to habituate the chimpanzees before the field researchers studied the animal's behavior was necessary in order for them to eventually be able to note the natural behavior of the chimpanzees, instead of simply noting chimpanzee behavior as a response to the presence of the researchers. In another study, Mitumba chimpanzees in the Gombe National Park were habituated for at least four years before the introduction of systematic data collection.

Researchers also use habituation and dishabituation procedures in the laboratory to study the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of human infants. The presentation of a visual stimulus to an infant elicits looking behavior that habituates with repeated presentations of the stimulus. When changes to the habituated stimulus are made (or a new stimulus is introduced), the looking behavior returns (dishabituates). A recent fMRI study revealed that the presentation of a dishabituating stimulus has an observable, physical effect upon the brain. In one study the mental spatial representations of infants were assessed using the phenomenon of dishabituation. Infants were presented repeatedly with an object in the same position on a table. Once the infants habituated to the object (i.e., spent less time looking at it) either the object was spatially moved while the infant remained at the same place near the table or the object was left in the same place but the infant was moved to the opposite side of the table. In both cases, the spatial relationship between the object and the infant had changed, but only in the former case did the object itself move. Would the infants know the difference? Or would they treat both cases as if the object itself moved? The results revealed a return of looking behavior (dishabituation) when the object's position was changed, but not when the infant's position was changed. Dishabituation indicates that infants perceived a significant change in the stimulus. Therefore, the infants understood when the object itself moved and when it did not. Only when the object itself moved were they interested in it again (dishabituation). When the object remained in the same position as before it was perceived as the same old boring thing (habituation). In general, habituation/dishabituation procedures help researchers determine the way infants perceive their environments.

Habitation is a useful primary tool for then assessing mental processes in the stages of infancy. The purpose for these tests, or paradigms records looking time, which is the baseline measurement. Habituation of looking time helps to assess certain child capabilities such as: memory, sensitivity, and helps the baby recognize certain abstract properties. Habituation is also found to be influenced by unchangeable factors such as infant age, gender, and complexity of the stimulus. (Caron & Caron, 1969; Cohen, DeLoache, & Rissman, 1975; Friedman, Nagy, & Carpenter, 1970; Miller, 1972; Wetherford & Cohen, 1973).

Though there are various challenges that come with habituation. Some infants have preferences for some stimuli based on their static or dynamic properties. Infant dishabituation also is not perceived as a direct measure for mental processes as well. In previous theories of habituation, an infant's dishabituation was thought to represent their own realization of the remembered stimulus of stimuli. For example: if infants would be dishabituated to a certain color item to a new item, we would know that they remembered the color and compared the two colors for differences. Also, another challenge that comes with habituation is the dichotomy of novelty vs familiar stimuli. If an infant preferred a novel still, this meant the infant observed the new spatial relation of the object, but not the object itself. If an infant preferred familiarity, the infant would notice the pattern of the stimuli, instead of the actual new stimuli.

The habituation/dishabituation procedure is also used to discover the resolution of perceptual systems. For instance, by habituating someone to one stimulus, and then observing responses to similar ones, one can detect the smallest degree of difference that is detectable.

Global citizenship education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizenship_education 

Global citizenship education (GCED) is a form of civic learning that involves students' active participation in projects that address global issues of a social, political, economic, or environmental nature. The two main elements of GCE are 'global consciousness'; the moral or ethical aspect of global issues, and 'global competencies', or skills meant to enable learners to participate in changing and developing the world. The promotion of GCE was a response by governments and NGOs to the emergence of supranational institution, regional economic blocs, and the development of information and communications technologies. These have all resulted in the emergence of a more globally oriented and collaborative approach to education. GCE addresses themes such as peace and human rights, intercultural understanding, citizenship education, respect for diversity and tolerance, and inclusiveness.

GCE provides the overall lens which views the role of education in the promotion of the rule of law (RoL). It draws upon experience from other education processes, including human rights education, peace education, education for sustainable development, education for international and intercultural understanding. GCE aims to empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both locally and globally, as proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world. GCE aspires to be a transformative experience, to give learners the opportunities and competencies to realize their rights and obligations to promote a better world and future. GCE is built on a lifelong learning perspective. It is not only for children and youth but also for adults. It can be delivered in formal, non-formal and informal settings. For this reason, GCE is part and parcel of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on Education (SDG4, Target 4.7). GCE is also a component of the single indicator for Target 12.8 in Sustainable Development Goal 12 for "responsible consumption and production".

Definition and origins

The Global Citizenship Foundation defines Global citizenship education as "a transformative, lifelong pursuit that involves both curricular learning and practical experience to shape a mindset to care for humanity and the planet, and to equip individuals with global competence to undertake responsible actions aimed at forging more just, peaceful, secure, sustainable, tolerant and inclusive societies."

Global citizenship consists of voluntary practices oriented to human rights, social justice, and environmentalism at the local, regional, and global level. Unlike national citizenship, global citizenship does not denote any legal status or allegiance to an actual form of government. The emergence of regional economic blocs, supra-national political institutions such as the European Union, and the advancement of ICTs, has caused governments to try to prepare national populations to be competitive in the global jobs market. This has led to the introduction of global citizenship education programs at primary, secondary, and tertiary level, but also at independent NGOs, grass roots organizations, and other large scale educational organizations, such as the International Baccalaureate Organization and UNESCO.

The most important features of global citizenship education are voluntary action that can extend from local to international collectives; the practice of cultural empathy; and a focus on active participation in social and political life at the local and global level. In the late 1990s, OXFAM UK designed a curriculum for global citizenship education which stressed "the 'active' role of global citizens".In this approach, individuals and groups both inside and outside the educational sector might take action that addresses human rights, trade, poverty, health, and environmental issues, for example. This is sometimes called the 'global consciousness' aspect of GCE. However, organizations such as UNESCO have also begun to emphasize 'global competencies', including science and technology into their GCE curricula.

Emergence and development

In the present era of globalization, the recognition of global interdependence on the part of the general public has led to a higher degree of interest in global citizenship in education. Though modern schooling may have been oriented to education suitable for the nation-state throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, in the 21st century, citizenship is understood in global terms, so that schooling might improve individual nations' global competitiveness. Many universities worldwide have responded to the need for a globally oriented education by sending their students to study abroad in increasing numbers, and some have announced that this will soon become a mandatory degree requirement.

Many governments also now promote GCE for the cohesion of society. The large numbers of people migrating across national borders means that the diversity of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups, "has raised [...] complex and difficult questions about citizenship, human rights, democracy, and education". In addition, global issues related to sustainability, such as the world's future energy arrangements, have also been incorporated into the domain of global citizenship education.

Competences

While GCE can take different forms, it has some common elements, which include fostering in learners the following competences:

• An attitude supported by an understanding of multiple levels of identity, and the potential for a collective identity that transcends individual cultural, religious, ethnic or other differences (such as a sense of belongingness to common humanity, and respect for diversity);
• A deep knowledge of global issues and universal values such as justice, equality, dignity and respect (such as understanding of the process of globalization, interdependence/ interconnectedness, the global challenges which cannot be adequately or uniquely addressed by nation states, sustainability as the main concept of the future);
• Cognitive skills to think critically, systemically and creatively, including adopting a multi-perspective approach that recognizes different dimensions, perspectives and angles of issues (such as reasoning and problem-solving skills supported by a multi-perspective approach);
• Non-cognitive skills, including social skills such as empathy and conflict resolution, and communication skills and aptitudes for networking and interacting with people of different backgrounds, origins, cultures and perspectives (such as global empathy, sense of solidarity); and
• Behavioural capacities to act collaboratively and responsibly to find global solutions to global challenges, and to strive for the collective good.

Pedagogy

Most educators agree that "global citizenship is a learned and nurtured behavior", and the most widely used classroom strategy for developing global skills is project-based learning. This pedagogical technique can be utilized in the case of almost any school subject, "[and] is the primary pedagogical strategy in the discourse of global competencies. Educators see it as an important method for developing the tools- technical and emotional- for success in the global society". With the aim of nurturing students' potential to be both learners and citizens, the project-based approach has been used successfully in community-based learning, for example.

Another important pedagogical feature of GCE is learning through communicative practices outside the classroom that "harness […] the educational force of the wider culture". If students are encouraged "to see themselves as political agents", educators assume they are more likely to acquire the knowledge, skills and abilities that enable them to become agents of change. Another important element of the student-centered participatory nature of GCED, is that students, through their engagement with others via Social Network Services, create their own forms of global citizenship through dialogue, learning, and action. This is an important element, for example, in the activities of grassroots organizations like 'GIN' (Global Issues Network), and Global Citizenship Foundation which involves students and teachers in projects that address global issues such as human rights, trade rules, and deforestation. Such student-driven, student-led projects combine both the 'global consciousness' and 'global competence' aspects of GCED.

UNESCO developed a competency framework on GCE with key learning outcomes, learner attributes and learning objectives to help guide policymakers and curriculum developers in their efforts to develop national curricula that empower learners to assume active roles, both locally and globally. This competency framework is based on a vision of learning that covers three domains to create a well-rounded learning experience: Cognitive, Socio-Emotional and Behavioural. Although conceptually distinct, these three domains do not represent isolated learning processes; they often overlap, mutually reinforce and build upon each other, and can also occur in parallel. For example, socio-emotional learning (SEL) requires understanding existing challenges in the community (cognitive) and making informed decisions (behaviour). By delivering lessons using all three domains, teachers are more likely to develop the broad range of knowledge, attitudes, values and behaviours that are expected of GCE. This approach also makes it possible to address the four pillars of learning that are key to ensuring learners are equipped with the skills they need to face the world as active and engaged citizens: Learning to know, to do, to be and to live together.

GCED domains of learning and expected learning outcomes

GCE includes three domains of learning, cited below:

• The cognitive domain includes thinking processes that involve the acquisition, organization and use of knowledge and information.
• The socio-emotional domain includes the development of skills that facilitate learners’ emotional welfare and successful interactions with others, including peers, teachers and family members and those in their community.
• The behavioural domain includes the development of the ability to use learned materials or to implement material in new and concrete situations.

GCE has three expected learning outcomes, including how:

• Learners acquire knowledge and understanding of local, national and global issues and the interconnectedness and interdependency of different countries and populations. Learners develop skills for critical thinking and analysis.
• Learners experience a sense of belonging to a common humanity, sharing values and responsibilities, based on human rights. Learners develop attitudes of empathy, solidarity and respect for differences and diversity.
• Learners act effectively and responsibly at local, national and global levels for a more peaceful and sustainable world. Learners develop motivation and willingness to take necessary actions.

'Global consciousness' and 'global competence'

Organizations implementing GCE programs, such as UNESCO, now emphasize the importance of expanding both students' 'global consciousness' and 'global competence'. 'Global consciousness' represents the ethical or moral dimension of global citizenship, whereas 'global competence' "features a blend of the technical-rational and the dispositional or attitudinal".

However, some view global consciousness and global competence as being closely related. The OECD, for instance, focuses on global competencies called 'psychosocial resources', of which there are three main types: "using tools interactively (technology and language skills), interacting in heterogeneous groups (cooperation, empathy), and acting autonomously (realizing one's identity, conducting life plans, defending and asserting rights".

Key learner attributes

GCE identifies three learner attributes, which refer to the traits and qualities that global citizenship education aims to develop in learners and correspond to the key learning outcomes mentioned earlier. These are: informed and critically literate; socially connected and respectful of diversity; ethically responsible and engaged. The three learner attributes draw on a review of the literature and of citizenship education conceptual frameworks, a review of approaches and curricula, as well as technical consultations and recent work by UNESCO on global citizenship education.

Informed and critically literate

Learners develop their understanding of the world, global themes, governance structures and systems, including politics, history and economics; understand the rights and responsibilities of individuals and groups (for example, women's and children's rights, indigenous rights, corporate social responsibility); and, recognise the interconnectedness of local, national and global issues, structures and processes. Learners develop the skills of critical inquiry (for example, where to find information and how to analyse and use evidence), media literacy and an understanding of how information is mediated and communicated. They develop their ability to inquire into global themes and issues (for example, globalisation, interdependence, migration, peace and conflict, sustainable development) by planning investigations, analysing data and communicating their findings. A key issue is the way in which language is used and, more specifically, how critical literacy is affected by the dominance of the English language and how this influences non-English speakers’ access to information.

Socially connected and respectful of diversity

Learners learn about their identities and how they are situated within multiple relationships (for example, family, friends, school, local community, country), as a basis for understanding the global dimension of citizenship. They develop an understanding of difference and diversity (for example, culture, language, gender, sexuality, religion), of how beliefs and values influence people's views about those who are different, and of the reasons for, and impact of, inequality and discrimination. Learners also consider common factors that transcend difference, and develop the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required for respecting difference and living with others.

Ethically responsible and engaged

Learners explore their own beliefs and values and those of others. They understand how beliefs and values inform social and political decision-making at local, national, regional and global levels, and the challenges for governance of contrasting and conflicting beliefs and values. Learners also develop their understanding of social justice issues in local, national, regional and global contexts and how these are interconnected. Ethical issues (for example, relating to climate change, consumerism, economic globalisation, fair trade, migration, poverty and wealth, sustainable development, terrorism, war) are also addressed. Learners are expected to reflect on ethical conflicts related to social and political responsibilities and the wider impact of their choices and decisions. Learners also develop the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to care for others and the environment and to engage in civic action. These include compassion, empathy, collaboration, dialogue, social entrepreneurship and active participation. They learn about opportunities for engagement as citizens at local, national and global levels, and examples of individual and collective action taken by others to address global issues and social injustice.

Examples

Council for Global Citizenship Education, India (and global)

Council for Global Citizenship Education — part of the Global Citizenship Foundation, a non-profit organization based in India — assists schools to adopt a participatory whole-school approach to global citizenship education through the GCED Innovative Schools Initiative. The initiative fosters continuous professional development (CPD) of educators; teacher-led contextualization, design, and development of GCED curriculum; engagement of children through the '100 Acts of Global Citizenship' School Challenge; and community through a Global Citizenship Festival at '100 Acts of Global Citizenship' participating schools. The Council for Global Citizenship Education initiative has also been implemented in 18 States of India and has a global presence through their GCED Ambassadors Program.

High Resolves, Australia

High Resolves is a secondary school educational initiative (implemented by the FYA, the only national, independent non-profit organisation for young people in Australia) consisting of a Global Citizenship Programme for Year 8 students and a Global Leadership Programme for Year 9 and 10 students. It aims to enable students to consider their personal role in developing their society as a global community through workshops, simulations, leadership skills training and hands-on action projects.

Developing the global dimension in the school curriculum, England

In England, the Department for Education and Skills produced Developing the global dimension in the school curriculum, a publication for head teachers, teachers, senior managers and those with responsibility for curriculum development. It aims to show how the global dimension can be integrated in the curriculum and across the school. It provides examples of how to integrate the global dimension from age 3 to age 16, outlining eight key concepts – global citizenship, conflict resolution, diversity, human rights, interdependence, sustainable development, values and perceptions, and social justice. For example, it gives guidance for the promotion of personal, social and emotional development of the youngest learners through discussion of photographs of children from around the world, activities, stories, and discussion of different places children have visited.

Activate, South Africa

Activate is a network of young leaders in South Africa which aims to bring about change though creative solutions to problems in society. Youth from all backgrounds and provinces in the country participate in a two-year programme. In the first year, there are three residential training programmes, working on a particular task. In the second year, participants form action groups on specific tasks, taking their work into the public domain. In one example, an Activator describes how he works in his local community to discourage young people away from joining gangs and engaging in substance abuse. He draws on his own negative experiences with gangs and drugs, having served seven years in jail. On being interviewed, he states: “My vision for South Africa is to see young people standing up and becoming role models... Be yourself, be real and pursue your dreams”.

Peace First, United States and Colombia

Peace First, a non-profit organisation based in the United States, has a programme in which youth volunteers work with children to design and implement community projects in a participatory way. The rationale is that children are natural creative thinkers and problem solvers. The programme focuses on developing social and emotional skills of self- awareness, empathy, inclusivity and relationships. It has also been implemented in rural areas of Colombia through a partnership between local governments and Colombian NGOs. Peace First has additionally developed a curriculum that can be used in schools. It addresses themes such as friendship, fairness, cooperation, conflict resolution and consequences of actions through experiential activities and cooperative games. For example, 1st graders learn about communicating their feelings, 3rd graders develop skills and awareness around communication and cooperation, 4th graders practice courage and taking a stand and 5th graders explore how to resolve and de-escalate conflicts.

Tokyo Global Engineering Corporation, Japan (and global)

Tokyo Global Engineering Corporation is an education-services organization that provides capstone education programs free of charge to engineering students and other stakeholders. These programs are intended to complement—but not to replace—coursework required by academic degree programs of study. The programs are educational opportunities, and students are not paid money for their participation. All correspondence among members is completed via e-mail, and all meetings are held via Skype, with English as the language of instruction and publication. Students and other stakeholders are never asked to travel or leave their geographic locations, and are encouraged to publish organizational documents in their personal, primary languages, when English is a secondary language.

Connection to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Main article: Education for sustainable development

GCE and ESD pursue the same vision: It is all about empowering learners of all ages to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and sustainable world. Both GCED and ESD:

• focus not only on the content and outcome of what is learned, but also on the process of how it is learned and in what type of environment it is learned.
• emphasize action, change and transformation.
• place importance on acquiring values and attitudes relevant to addressing global challenges.
• foster skills for collaboration, communication and critical thinking.

Both GCE and ESD help learners understand the interconnected world in which they live and the complexities of the global challenges faced. GCE and ESD help learners to develop their knowledge, skills, attitudes and values so that they can address these challenges responsibly and effectively now and in the future.

Connection to Education for Justice

Main article: Education for Justice

GCED provides the overall framework for education for justice or the approach to the rule of law (RoL). It aims to empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both locally and globally, as proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world.

The GCED expected learning outcomes are based on a vision of learning that covers three domains to create a well-rounded learning experience: cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural. Although distinct, the three domains do not represent isolated learning processes; they often overlap, reinforce and build upon each other, and can also occur in parallel. For example, socio-emotional learning requires understanding existing challenges in the community (cognitive) and making informed decisions (behavioural).

Teachers strive to develop learners’ ability to use the knowledge they have, or have gained, to alter their behaviours and ‘do the right thing’ in the appropriate circumstances. For example, learning how to take ethical decisions and speaking out against discrimination. Making this shift from ‘knowing’ to ‘doing’ involves helping learners apply their knowledge to real-world situations.

Objections

Some fundamentalist critics believe GCE might undermine religious education and promote secular values. Others are concerned that the pedagogical approach of most global citizenship education curricula are too often produced in particular Northern, Western contexts. Some OF critics claim that GCE curricula promote values that are too individualistic. Dill, for example, claims that "the majority of the world experiences social and communal life not in terms of isolated individuals, but as collective identities and traditions. For many of these groups, the dominant forms of global citizenship education and its moral order will be experienced as coercive and unjust', so 'global' citizenship curriculum should be seen as a local practice, "which diverse cultures will conceptualize and construct differently".