“Think happy thoughts!”: Positive mood and delaying gratification in children

• Activities designed to induce mood states in children (such as videos and recalling emotional memories) impact cognitive performance on a range of tasks (e.g. Tornare et al, 2016; Schnall et al, 2008). • However, the mechanisms for such effects are often unclear, as mood inductions could impact several affective, motivational and cognitive processes. • Self-regulation generally improves following positive mood inductions in children (Yates et al., 1981; Fry, 1977), and this could be due to changes in subjective mood, which can promote higher expectations for success (Horn and Arbuckle, 1988), or increases in distracting thoughts or behaviour that redirect attention away from desirable rewards (Mischel et al., 1972; Yates et al., 1981). • In this study, we aimed to determine whether changes in subjective mood or distractive thoughts could account for improvements in delaying gratification following positive mood induction.