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We all know the Chinese cliché of "三岁看老". But I have not had a chance to study on this from psychological point of view until recently. I listened to an interview on NPR of an author who wrote a book based on the famous Marshmallow Temptation test. It got me so interested in the subject. I found this article, then this Youtube video, then the book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNvvL9j_SIs&feature=related (The Time Paradox)
You have to watch that YouTube video. It is fun to watch.
Here is the excerpt from that article from boston.com:
It is a simple test, but has surprising power to predict a child's future. A 4-year-old is left sitting at a table with a marshmallow or other treat on it and given a challenge: Wait to eat it until a grown-up comes back into the room, and you'll get two. If you can't wait that long, you'll get just one.
Some children can wait less than a minute, others last the full 20 minutes. The longer the child can hold back, the better the outlook in later life for everything from SAT scores to social skills to academic achievement, according to classic work by Columbia University psychologist Walter Mischel, who has followed his test subjects from preschool in the late 1960s into their 40s now.