Earlier today, we shared the results of new scientific research into stretch marks, and now we’re shifting our focus to our children’s intelligence.
A team of scientists claims to have figured out how to determine your child’s future level of intelligence – and it all comes down to treats.
Based on ground-breaking new research, Professor Dieter Wolke and his team believe that a child’s capacity to resist a treat can determine their intelligence and risk of developing attention and learning problems.
Taking inspiration from the classic Marshmallow Test of the ‘60s, Prof Wolke and the team hid raisins under a cup and left children with them in a series of experiments which began in 1985.
According to their findings, being able to resist the treat for more than a minute was directly linked to better academic achievement when the kids were older.
As part of the study, the team compared results between children born prematurely and those who were not. The results showed that those born very prematurely were far more likely to take the raisin before the first minute.
“An easy, five-minute raisin game task represents a promising new tool for follow-up assessments to predict attention regulation and learning in preterm and term born children,” Prof Wolke wrote in The Journal of Paediatrics.
