The Marshmallow Experiment
Imagine that you are seven years old. You are participating in an experiment. A researcher greets you and shows you into a small room. In the room there is a marshmallow. The marshmallow is for you, but here is the interesting part: The researcher tells you that he is going to leave you alone in the room for a while. You can eat the marshmallow right away, or you can wait until he gets back. If you wait until he gets back, you will get a second marshmallow.
What do you do? Do you eat the marshmallow right away?
An experiment like this, known informally as the marshmallow experiment, was conducted decades ago at Stanford University. It turned out that some children ate the marshmallow right away, while others were able to wait. In other words, some sought instant self-gratification, and some delayed it.
Years later, the researchers followed up on the participants. They found that the children who delayed self-gratification were in general more successful than those who ate the marshmallow right away. By a variety of measures, including SAT scores, they appeared to be more competent.
Common sense tells us that the ability to delay self-gratification is a mark of maturity. The marshmallow experiment provides evidence that it may also correlate with success in life.
Notes:
- Many of these verb phrases consist of an auxiliary verb and a main verb. So, for example, “are participating” and “do...eat” are considered verb phrases.
- “is going to leave”: If we consder “is going to” a kind of auxiliary verb, then this is a verb phrase, just like “will leave.”
- “known as...”: If you underlined “known,” that’s fine. It is a verb. It is a nonfinite verb, unlike the other underlined verbs and verb phrases. (See Chapter 4.)
■ Exercise 2 Underline the complete subjects in the sentences below, and double- underline the verbs that go with them. Identifying the subject means identifying the main word of the subject and the parts that modify it. (In the first sentence, the main word is in boldface.) When you underline the verb, include both auxiliary verbs and main verbs (as in the first sentence, with was...used).
In the 1960s and 70s, the term “generation gap” was often used to refer to the differences between young people in the U.S. and their parents’ generation. Many young people felt distant from their parents because of differences in ideas about politics, social issues, and popular culture. Since then, conflicts between generations have diminished in many ways. Child-rearing experts in the late 20th century encouraged parents to be like friends to their children. Thanks to technology, young people and their parents are able to contact each other easily at any time. On any college campus, the students you see texting or talking on cell phones are often communicating with Mom or Dad. Fifty years ago, closeness of this kind was less. Grammar is the system and structure of a language. The rules of grammar help us decide the order we put words in and which form of a word to use. When you're talking about grammar, it's useful to know some basic terms. The following are called parts of speech and they each have their own function. The definition of grammar is the study of the way words are used to make sentences. An example of grammar is how commas and semicolons are supposed to be used. ... (uncountable, linguistics) The study of the internal structure of words (morphology) and the use of words in the construction of phrases and sentences (syntax).