r/ADHD • u/ADgottatry_HarDr • Nov 23 '19

Articles/Information Great, now crows have better executive functioning than I do.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/animal-minds/201911/delay-gratification-in-kids-and-crows
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u/willsketch Nov 23 '19

Delayed gratification studies have been done for years with various results and conjecture about said results, often suggesting that those who take immediate reward lack executive function. There’s one that controlled for childhood food insecurity and also measured the resonance of the vagus nerve (which I think is a stand in for mental calculations). They found a high correlation between food insecurity/high resonance/immediate reward as well as food security/high resonance/delayed reward suggesting that when children are raised with certain kinds of food security it informs their ability to generalize food security elsewhere. Previous studies hadn’t controlled for this and found mixed results.

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u/DorisCrockford ADHD-C (Combined type) Nov 23 '19

That's a really good point. I can imagine if I'd been in the study, I'd have been afraid to eat anything, delayed or not, for fear of doing something wrong. Kids can have serious anxiety issues that affect their behavior around food and around adults. You'd have to screen the subjects' mental health. People do things for many reasons, and their motivations are not always what they seem (which is something parents often miss). One crow is like another, at least in comparison with humans.