We aimed to longitudinally examine how symbolic distancing affects preschool children's delay tolerance in a delay choice task. We presented children with choices between a smaller immediate reward and a larger delayed reward in conditions with either symbolic stimuli or edible rewards. Overall, symbolic distancing modulated children's delay…

Observation indicated that children most frequently represent objects by performing actions appropriate to the represented objects. With increasing age, children represent objects without using functional actions and with objects bearing little physical similarity to the represented objects. (Author/DB)