This study assesses the effects of three kinds of verbal plans, temptation-inhibiting plans, reward-oriented plans, and task-facilitating plans, on children's resistance to temptation. Each plan was studied in an elaborated and an unelaborated form. Subjects were 70 four-year olds, 35 boys and 35 girls. The major piece of apparatus employed was a talking Clown Box. Each child was shown a pegboard task, and warned that the Clown Box might tempt him to stop working, thus ensuring that he would be allowed to play only with some unattractive toys rather than with some special ones. The children were instructed in group-specific verbalizations to be repeated to the Clown Box. The main dependent measure assessed the proportion of time spent working by each child. Subjects in the elaborated temptation-inhibiting and elaborated reward-oriented plan conditions worked for a greater proportion of the test phase than those in other plan conditions and than those in the control conditions. Whether or not a self-instructional plan will facilitate a young child's self-control depends on the substantive or content nature of the plan, and its level of organization of structure. (Author/JLL)