Apex Chiropractic and Wellness Center Newsletter

Feel and Function Better. Experience a Better You with Dr. Jahnke.

October, 2010 Newsletter

"The Marshmallow Test and Learning"

How a Simple Marshmallow Can Predict Your Future:
A child’s ability to delay gratification for 15 minutes pays educational dividends years later.
View the videos below to learn more.

It’s called the Marshmallow Test. And some neuroscientists believe it is a critical first step needed to improve schooling. Many studies show it foretells success in life more accurately than how well a child can read or do math. The Marshmallow Test got its name from an experiment at Stanford University in the 1960s on 4-year old nursery school kids.

Researchers told children that they could have one thing they really wanted right away – a marshmallow – but if they could wait while the researcher left the room and came back about 15 minutes later, they could have two. It was designed to test self-control. The researchers, led by psychologist Walter Mischel, found only about 30 percent of more than 600 children tested could hold out. That’s as far as it went until the early 1980s, when Mischel followed up and discovered the children who had been able to wait for two marshmallows were also doing better academically.

Jonah Lehrer, in a recent New Yorker magazine article, reports those children who waited 15 minutes averaged 210 points higher – more than 10 percent – on college entrance exams than did those who could wait only 30 seconds. Collectively, the brain skills needed to wait for marshmallows are known as “executive function” or, more broadly, as “self-regulation.” They include inhibiting impulses, sustaining attention, planning, prioritizing, and finding and carrying out strategies to stick to your plan. In kid-friendly language, it means you can “rise to the challenge.”

Here’s the really exciting thing: Like math and reading, these skills can be taught and learned. They are not genetic. We can all learn how to get more marshmallows. Stuart Shanker, research professor of psychology and philosophy at York University and a leading figure in neuro-education notes that these more complex executive function skills must be learned as you age.

When a baby is born, he says, it has a relatively undeveloped brain and primitive emotional circuits – fear, rage, love and curiosity – but no ability to control them. To do that, he argues, that baby must learn from the higher-level brain of its parent or caregiver, laying down pathways of neural connections through one-on-one stimulus and response between the two. That’s what a parent is doing by teaching the baby to calm itself, for example. “By being regulated, a baby acquired the ability to regulate,” Shanker says.

Sometimes, though, that process is interrupted – by stress, hunger, environment or the caregiver’s inadequate responses. And that creates problems for the child, for schools and, ultimately, for society. Shanker says perhaps as many as half of North American children have poor self-regulation by the time they get to school, citing a study of nearly 3,600 teachers in the U.S. in 2000. It manifests in high rates of attention-deficit disorder or hyperactivity, among many other problems.

Neurodevelopment is one piece of the learning process. 1 in 6 children in the U.S. suffers from a neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism, aggression, ADHD, and dyslexia. Dr. Jahnke has been working with children with sensory development disorders; recommendations generally include dietary changes, neurosensory exercises, and other drug-free approaches. If your child is having trouble concentrating, struggles with reading comprehension or has other learning challenges, schedule a consultation to learn more about a drug-free approach to helping your child.

Consultations & Appointments for Sensory Development Program now being scheduled for October.

Taking half the recommended dose?

When a medical doctor prescribes a particular medication and the patient decides to take half the recommended dose then the medication is probably not going to work. It's not that the drug doesn't "work." It's that the patient didn't take the required dose. Chiropractic requires a certain frequency - a certain dosage - in order to produce change. If you decide to access care based on how you're feeling from day to day then chiropractic may not "work" for you. But it's not chiropractic's fault when you walk out after one or two visits and say, "Hmmm, do I feel better yet?" Imagine a cancer patient on chemotherapy after a couple of sessions saying, "Wow, I feel like crap. I'm gonna quit this stuff." If your chiropractor recommends a specific treatment frequency it is for your benefit. If you have questions about your treatment recommendations, ask. It is important for you to understand your body’s healing process.

Newsletter Archives

August 2009
Heartburn? Indigestion? Gastrointestinal (GI) Distress?
Self-Test – Discover if You Need An Adjustment
January 2010
Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms When My Lab Tests are Normal???
Today's Olympian and Chiropractic
October 2010
The Marshmallow Test and Learning
Taking half the recommended dose?
May 2011
Doing All the Right Things? Still Not Losing Weight?
Your Children’s Health – From Ear Aches and Sprained Ankles to ADD, ADHD and Autism
August 2011
Girls Night Out - October 6th
Brain Strain: Mixed Messages in Childhood Development
Migraines: A Natural Approach