A cool attentional focus during the classic delay of gratification (DG) task involves shifting attention away from the emotion-arousing features and is a key mechanism that underlies children’s ability to resist temptation and wait. Yet, we know relatively little about what gives rise to individual differences in cool focus in the first place. The current study (N = 162, M_age = 6.86 years) addressed this question by focusing on key aspects of child temperament (i.e., behavioral inhibition, BI) and caregiver emotion socialization (i.e., distraction encouragement) as joint predictors of cool focus. We theorized that because children are left alone in an unfamiliar environment for an undefined duration, the DG task would be especially taxing for children higher in BI, hindering their ability to deploy a cool focus and wait. We also reasoned that caregiver encouragement of distraction would serve as a protective factor by allowing children higher in BI to more easily activate a cool focus even when experiencing a taxing task. Results were partially consistent with these hypotheses, shedding new light on precursors to a central ingredient of DG ability.

在经典的延迟满足（DG）任务中，冷静的注意力集中涉及将注意力从激发情绪的特征上转移开，这是儿童抵制诱惑和等待的能力的关键机制。然而，我们对于到底是什么导致了冷静聚焦的个体差异知之甚少。当前的研究（ N = 162， M_年龄= 6.86 岁）通过关注儿童气质（即行为抑制，BI）和看护者情绪社交（即分心鼓励）的关键方面作为冷焦点的联合预测因子来解决这个问题。我们推测，由于孩子们在不熟悉的环境中单独呆了一段不确定的时间，DG 任务对于 BI 较高的孩子来说尤其繁重，阻碍了他们集中注意力和等待的能力。我们还推断，看护者鼓励分散注意力可以作为一种保护因素，让商业智能较高的孩子即使在经历繁重的任务时也能更容易地保持冷静的注意力。结果与这些假设部分一致，为 DG 能力核心成分的前体提供了新的线索。