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Parent Praise to 1- to 3-Year-Olds Predicts Children's Motivational Frameworks 5 Years Later
Abstract
In laboratory studies, praising children's effort encourages them to adopt incremental motivational frameworks-they believe ability is malleable, attribute success to hard work, enjoy challenges, and generate strategies for improvement. In contrast, praising children's inherent abilities encourages them to adopt fixed-ability frameworks. Does the praise parents spontaneously give children at home show the same effects? Although parents' early praise of inherent characteristics was not associated with children's later fixed-ability frameworks, parents' praise of children's effort at 14-38 months (N = 53) did predict incremental frameworks at 7-8 years, suggesting that causal mechanisms identified in experimental work may be operating in home environments.
... Children who receive generic and person praise increasingly view intelligence as a static, inherent internal trait (Corpus & Lepper, 2007). As a result, they are more apt to create entity frameworks about their intelligence (Gunderson et al., 2013;Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013). Children with entity frameworks believe intelligence is immutable. ...
... This means they believe their performance is related to the amount of effort they put into a task. Importantly, these motivational frameworks develop early (Gunderson et al., 2013) and impact children's challenge-and strategy-seeking behaviors, which, in turn, impacts their immediate and future learning outcomes (Blackwell et al., 2007;Good et al., 2003;Park et al., 2016). ...
... From the perspective of educators, praise is a powerful, albeit risky, tool. Although adults might enjoy increased compliance and prosocial behaviors (Drake & Nelson, 2021;Sutherland et al., 2000), they risk sacrificing children's learning outcomes, concepts of self-worth, and motivational frameworks in the process (Brummelman et al., 2017;Gunderson et al., 2013;Lee et al., 2017;Noltemeyer et al., 2019). Furthermore, extrapolating from the research with classroom teachers, SLPs committed to using praise as a behavior management tool need to commit to a very high rate of praise (i.e., more than one praise statement every 2 min; Floress et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
Speech-language pathologists often use praise during intervention to encourage children and manage behaviors. Praise is often believed to promote improved performance. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that praise leads to improved performance, especially during language intervention provided during therapy sessions. Given the widespread use of praise, it is important for speech-language pathologists to understand the forms and functions of praise, as well as the potential impacts of praise on language learning outcomes. The purpose of this tutorial is to encourage speech-language pathologists to reflect upon and critique their own use of praise in language learning interventions.
Method
The forms and functions of praise are reviewed, followed by a discussion of the role of praise in language interventions. Alternatives to praise are discussed.
Conclusion
This tutorial provides a comprehensive review of the forms and functions of praise and offers speech-language pathologists alternatives that are more likely to improve language learning outcomes.
... Mindsets about intelligence have attracted a significant amount of research attention, in part because of their consequences for student motivation and achievement. In spite of this level of interest, mindset research has largely overlooked the preschool and elementary-school years, focusing instead on middle-school-aged children (e.g., [3,21]), high schoolers (e.g., [18,19]), and college-aged students (e.g., [5,17]) (for some exceptions, see [25][26][27][28][29]). In what follows, we discuss why the quantity of research on preschool and elementary school students' mindsets has trailed the quantity of mindset research among older age groups (i.e., adolescents and adults). ...
... Within the past decade, two scales have been developed to measure growth mindsets in young children. The first scale [25] has been used with children as young as 7 years of age. ...
... Our goal for the new scale was to capture young children's beliefs about the malleability of intellectual ability with a high degree of precision and in a way that was linguistically and conceptually accessible to this participant population. In contrast to prior measurement efforts that mixed multiple aspects of children's motivational frameworks [25,43], we homed in on children's beliefs about ability (exclusive of other aspects of their motivational frameworks), with several theoretical and practical considerations-detailed next-guiding our approach to developing the items in our scale. ...
Beliefs about the malleability of intellectual ability—mindsets—shape achievement. Recent evidence suggests that even young children hold such mindsets; yet, no reliable and valid instruments exist for measuring individual differences in young children’s mindsets. Given the potential relevance of mindsets to children’s achievement-related behavior and learning, we developed and tested the psychometric properties of the Growth Mindset Scale for Children (GM-C). Among other psychometric properties, we assessed this instrument’s (a) factor structure, (b) measurement invariance, (c) internal consistency, (d) temporal stability (test-retest reliability), (e) concurrent validity, and (f) cross-cultural robustness in samples of US children (Study 1; N = 220; ages 4 through 6; 50% girls; 39% White) and South African children (Study 2; predominantly grades 4 and 5; N = 331; 54% girls; 100% non-White). The GM-C scale exhibited four factors, representing beliefs about the instability of low ability, the malleability of low ability, the instability of high ability, and the malleability of high ability. The GM-C scale also demonstrated invariance across age, acceptable internal consistency (αs between .70 to .90), and moderate temporal stability over approximately one month (rs between .38 to .72). Concurrent validity was supported by significant relations between children’s scores on the subscales about low ability and their goal orientations (Studies 1 and 2), challenge-seeking behavior, and achievement in math and English (Study 2). These findings suggest that the GM-C scale is a promising tool for measuring mindsets in young children. We offer practical recommendations for using this new scale and discuss theoretical implications.
... In addition to person-or process-related feedback, some studies also describe other specific feedback forms, e.g. outcome-related feedback ("This picture looks great") (Graf- König & Puca, 2024;Gunderson et al., 2013;Hattie & Timperley, 2007;Leber & Kammermeyer, 2021). Positive as well as negative effects on persistence, self-assessment, motivation, or coping strategies are reported for both non-specific and specific feedback. ...
... However, the question of what kind of feedback children in their early childhood really receive in authentic and natural everyday situations can only be answered by observations at home or in (pre)school classrooms. Studies observing the feedback children get in their early childhood focus feedback at home (Gunderson et al., 2013), in preschool and kindergarten (Floress & Jenkins, 2015;Leber & Kammermeyer, 2021;Wang et al., 2021), in kindergarten and primary school (Floress & Beschta, 2018;Reinke et al., 2013) or in primary (and sometimes early secondary) school (Burnett & Mandel, 2010;Downs et al., 2019;Floress et al., 2017;Floress et al., 2021). The research interests of these observational feedback studies are very different (for example observe teacher's use of feedback in Leber and Kammermeyer (2021) and Wang et al. (2021), compare the use of feedback in different group sizes in Floress and Jenkins (2015), or observe and compare feedback in general and special education classrooms in Floress et al. (2017)). ...
... Only a few studies subdivide the feedback even more precisely. Gunderson et al. (2013) observed everyday family life to investigate how parents praise in natural situations and distinguish process praise, person praise, and other praise. As in the questionnaire study of Graf- König and Puca (2024), results show that in everyday situations different kinds of praise appear within the same interaction (e.g., "Good job, you're good at that, nice!") (Gunderson et al., 2013). ...
... Person-oriented feedback, which focuses on stable, global attributes of children, may convey the idea that ability is fixed, potentially leading to children avoiding challenges. In contrast, process-oriented feedback links children's performance to their engagement and strategies, which may foster an incremental theory and high persistence in children (Gunderson et al., 2013;Kamins & Dweck, 1999;Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013;Zentall & Morris, 2010). It is usually assumed that parents with a stronger incremental theory of intelligence would provide more process-oriented feedback and less person-oriented feedback to their children. ...
... It is usually assumed that parents with a stronger incremental theory of intelligence would provide more process-oriented feedback and less person-oriented feedback to their children. Nevertheless, empirical studies do not support this assumption (Boncquet et al., 2022;Gunderson et al., 2013;Li et al., 2023). Furthermore, some evidence has suggested that incremental theorists are more likely to constructively interact with their children in the learning process (Jiang et al., 2019;Jose & Bellamy, 2012;Matthes & Stoeger, 2018), provide more autonomy support and exhibit less control or intrusive behaviors Muenks et al., 2015;Sheffler & Cheung, 2022). ...
... Matthes & Stoeger, 2018). However, other studies have not found such an association (Boncquet et al., 2022;Gunderson et al., 2013). Notably, preschoolers are too young to develop a mature concept of intelligence (Kurtz-Costes et al., 2005). ...
While prior research has indicated a link between children’s implicit theories of intelligence (i.e., beliefs about the malleability of intelligence or abilities) and their learning behaviors, it remains unclear whether this association expands across generations. This study explored the impact of parents’ incremental theories of intelligence on preschooler’ approaches to learning (characterized by competence motivation, attention/persistence and attitude toward learning) and analyzed the inner influencing mechanism from a perspective of motivations. The data was collected through online questionnaire surveys, involving a total of 402 Chinese parents of children aged 3 to 6. The results showed that children whose parents held stronger incremental theories had better approaches to learning. Moreover, children’s achievement motivations and goal orientations served as serial mediators in this relationship. Specifically, parental incremental theories were correlated with children’s lower fear of failure and greater hope for success. Children’s hope for success was positively associated with their learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation. In contrast, children’s fear of failure was positively related to their performance goal orientation but negatively to their learning goal orientation. Ultimately, children’s learning goal orientation was positively linked to their competence motivation, attention/persistence and attitude toward learning, while children’s performance goal orientation was detrimental to their competence motivation and attitude toward learning but conducive to their attention/persistence. The findings provide important evidence for the spillover effect of pedagogical agents’ implicit theories and expand the evidence in the field of preschoolers’ approaches to learning.
... Recent meta-analyses have made this approach even more popular due to the variability in and question of its evident effectiveness (e.g., Burnette et al., 2023;Macnamara and Burgoyne, 2023). Previous studies have shown that adult feedback that attributes children's failures to effort, strategies, or other process-oriented factors, known as process feedback, contributes to the development of a growth mindset (e.g., Gunderson et al., 2013). Nevertheless, the impact of subtle forms of process feedback and their connection to academic achievement requires further research. ...
... While some research reveals a direct positive association between adults' mindsets and adolescents' mindsets (e.g., Mesler et al., 2021), other researchers have found that adults' mindsets do not always shape children's mindsets (e.g., Haimovitz and Dweck, 2016). Instead, extensive findings suggest that it is adults' behaviors that help children understand outcomes in terms of behavioral or trait factors and predict children's mindsets (e.g., Cimpian et al., 2007;Gunderson et al., 2013). ...
... Furthermore, students' perceptions of parents' process feedback foster the development of a growth mindset in 75% of the 32 countries. This positive relationship supports Haimovitz and Dweck's (2017) model and aligns with previous studies on early parental praise (Gunderson et al., 2013) and process parenting practices (Haimovitz and Dweck, 2016). This finding also supported the positive correlation between subtle forms of parental process feedback and mindset formation. ...
Background: A growth mindset is one's belief that intelligence is malleable. Extensive research has shown that a growth mindset can enhance students' academic performance. However, its mechanism on students' digital reading performance has been little explored. Aims: This study examined the correlation between perceptions of teachers' and parents' process feedback and adolescents' growth mindsets and the relationships among feedback, a growth mindset, and digital reading performance. Sample: Data on 250,912 fifteen-year-old students from 32 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 were drawn. Methods: The data were analyzed through the use of multilevel mediation. Results: The results showed that in most countries, perceptions of teachers' and parents' process feedback used positively predict adolescents' growth mindsets, which in turn positively predict digital reading performance and mediate the relationship between perceptions of feedback and reading performance. Conclusions: Educators and parents should intentionally integrate process-oriented factors into their feedback to help students realize their academic potential. Cultural heterogeneity should also be considered concerning the role of a growth mindset.
... To illustrate, in a study involving very young children, researchers demonstrated the type of parental praise of their children's effort at the ages of 14-38 months predicted a growth mindset at 7-8 years (Gunderson et al., 2013). Other studies have corroborated the finding that when children as young as pre-school age are praised for their efforts on non-academic tasks, they will later demonstrate greater effort, persistence, and enjoyment in subsequent tasks (e.g., Cimpian et al., 2007). ...
... Mindset-based research with elementary grades is critically important given that fundamental attitudes toward learning and foundational skills may have longstanding implications (Gunderson et al., 2013;Stanley et al., 2017). Moreover, as noted by Petscher et al. (2017), reading may be the most significant academic skill developing throughout the elementary and secondary school years (Language and Reading Research Consortium, 2015;Tighe et al., 2015). ...
Mindset involves an array of beliefs related to the malleability of certain attributes, including intelligence. One’s growth mindset comprises a variety of cognitive and motivational factors (e.g., learning goals, effort beliefs) and the perception that skill attainment and outcome in any domain are tethered to personal effort. A fixed mindset encompasses goals, beliefs, and perceptions that skill level is not malleable or impacted by effort. Structural equation models tested investigated direct and indirect pathways of mindset and motivational variables (i.e., learning goals, effort beliefs) with reading outcomes (i.e., word reading, fluency, reading comprehension) in a diverse sample of fourth grade students (n = 408) with reading difficulties. Results revealed a direct impact of fixed mindset (−0.21 to −0.36) and effort beliefs (0.18–0.31) on all standardized, reading-based outcomes. There were no significant mediating pathways. Results are juxtaposed to other research in this area, and practical implications are discussed. Growth mindset appears a robust predictor of positive academic outcomes, and it may be beneficial to facilitate growth mindset in classrooms.
... » suffit à induire chez eux une conception fixiste de l'intelligence et, par conséquent, de la compétence mathématique. De même, Gunderson et al. (2013) montrent que la manière dont les parents complimentent leurs enfants entre 14 et 36 mois était un bon prédicteur de l'adoption d'une vision incrémentale de l'intelligence vers 7 à 8 ans. ...
Mots-clés : neurosciences, éducabilité mathématique, incompétence apprise, savoirs endogènes, Carole Dweck Résumé Cet article soutient que l’éducabilité mathématique est universelle et explore comment nous pouvons utiliser les données des sciences cognitives et les traditions et connaissances endogènes pour améliorer la qualité de l’enseignement des mathématiques. Dans un premier temps, nous discutons de l’universalité ou non de la capacité mathématique. Nous exposons des travaux de sciences cognitives qui montrent que tous les humains disposent de certaines compétences innées qui sont réinvesties dans la compétence mathématique. Dans un deuxième temps, nous nous penchons plus spécifiquement sur les méthodes pédagogiques et sur l’impact de l’attitudes des adultes sur le succès ou l’échec des élèves. Nous parlerons de l’incompétence apprise et des conceptions fixistes et incrémentales de l’intelligence pour montrer que la conception adoptée à la fois par un élève et son enseignant peut être déterminante pour l'efficacité de l’enseignement reçu. Nous montrons ensuite que nous disposons désormais d'études scientifiques suffisamment corroborées pour promouvoir en toute confiance un certain nombre de pratiques enseignantes et nous méfier d’autres pratiques qui, pourtant, semblent intuitivement efficaces. Dans un dernier temps, nous nous penchons sur la meilleure manière de mobiliser les traditions et connaissances endogènes africaines afin d'améliorer et surtout de démocratiser notre système d’enseignement mathématique. L’on soulignera également la nécessité de procéder avec prudence dans ce domaine afin d’éviter certains écueils.
... Parents also praise their children's daily achievements and encourage them to explore their interests. Steinberg et al. (1992) and Gunderson et al. (2013) indicate the positive effects of parental encouragement on children's academic performance. Darolia and Wydick (2011) clarify that students who are given encouragement from their parents show more effort at school compared to students who are given assistance, such as money and cars. ...
Parental encouragement improves a child’s academic performance, which reflects the individual accumulation of human capital and can prevent the child from becoming poor in the future. We provide a model to clarify the mechanism by which parental encouragement influences the child’s efforts by considering parental time preference, wages, and background. We find that parents who have a child with low innate ability, high wages, strong time preference, and were given little encouragement from their parents in the past hesitate to encourage their child and tend to give them assistance for survival. We also imply that the influence of parental encouragement to children’s academic performance is strong in early grades rather than in late grades. Moreover, we indicate that educational institutes such as schools and local governments can reduce parents’ time preference and provide information about opportunities that stimulate children's efforts at schools. These actions urge the parents who hesitated to encourage their children to begin to encourage them. Furthermore, these actions increase the effectiveness of parental encouragement and realize the child's efforts at school, which results in improving their wages in the labor market in the future.
... In particular, growth mindset theory posits that an individual's beliefs about intelligence are shaped by the context of the environment, such as feedback from parents and teachers. For example, parents' praise (context) can influence children's beliefs about intelligence, which then affects their behavioral outcomes, such as persistence in academic tasks (Gunderson et al. 2013). This theoretical perspective underscores the importance of social and contextual factors in shaping one's belief in the ability to grow. ...
This study investigates the moderating effects of several contextual factors (i.e., teachers’ growth mindset, perceived school climate, and perceived parental autonomy support) on the relationship between students’ growth mindset and academic achievement. Drawing on Dweck’s growth mindset theory and recent research findings that highlight the context sensitivity of the growth mindset, we hypothesize that supportive environments strengthen the positive impact of students’ growth mindset on academic outcomes. A sample of 358 middle school students (53.8% female; Mage = 13.38 years, SD = 2.20) from public schools in Shanghai City, mainland China, was assessed via three validated instruments: (1) the Growth Mindset Inventory, which is used to measure students’ and teachers’ beliefs about intelligence; (2) the Delaware School Climate Survey for Students, which is used to assess students’ perceptions of the school climate; and (3) the Perceived Parental Autonomy Support Scale, which is used to evaluate students’ perceived parental autonomy support. Academic achievement was measured by district-level final exam scores. The results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that teachers’ growth mindset, perceived school climate support (e.g., teacher–student and student–student relations, fairness of rules, school safety, liking of school), and the perception of positive parental autonomy support (e.g., choice, rationale, acknowledgment) positively moderated the relationship between students’ growth mindset and academic achievement. In contrast, the perception of negative parental autonomy factors (e.g., punishment threats, performance pressure, guilt-inducing criticism) negatively moderated this relationship. These results indicate that the relationship between students’ growth mindset and academic achievement may vary depending on contextual factors, highlighting the importance of considering both positive and negative influences when designing educational strategies.
... Polizei die "Organisation der Kontrolle der Gewalt" (Luhmann, 1995, S. 585 (Gunderson et al., 2013;Moser et al., 2011;Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Anders ist es, wenn Fehler und Scheitern positiv besetzt sind. ...
Auch die Polizei macht Fehler. Der polizeiliche Umgang mit Fehlern ist nicht nur innerhalb der Polizei ein Thema. Von öffentlicher, politischer und wissenschaftlicher Seite wird das Handeln der Polizei routinemäßig aufmerksam begleitet. Sind polizeiliche Entscheidungen fraglich oder offenkundig falsch, stellt sich nicht nur die Frage, warum im konkreten Fall so und nicht anders entschieden und gehandelt worden ist. Ebenso zur Diskussion steht der grundsätzliche Umgang der Polizei mit Fehlern, ihre Fehlerkultur. Der Beitrag setzt hier an. Aus Sicht einer Theorie sozialer Systeme fragen wir nach der Form und Funktion von Fehlern im System der Polizei. Dabei argumentieren wir, dass Fehler den Normalfall einer auf Entscheidungen basierenden Polizeiarbeit darstellen. Dass die Polizei eigene Fehler erkennt und aus ihnen lernt, ist dabei ebenso funktional wie das Nicht-Sehen von und Nicht-Lernen aus Fehlern. Gerade angesichts des regelmäßigen Ernsts von Einsatzlagen bilden Games, so unser Vorschlag, ein probates Mittel für ein effektives Lernen der Polizei, auch aus Fehlern.
... Finally, a secondary goal of the current work is to offer an initial exploration of correlates of mindsets of parenting. Existing work highlights how praise, public health messages, peers, and feedback experiences can all influence mindsets (Gunderson et al. 2013;Hoyt et al. 2019;King 2020;Limeri et al. 2020). Yet, less is known about the degree to which individuals may hold growth, relative to fixed, mindsets of parenting and what may contribute to these beliefs. ...
Parenting can bring both joy and stress. Identifying factors that foster greater engagement and enjoyment while also helping parents cope with inevitable stressors is critical for healthy child development and parental wellbeing. In the current work, we build on growth mindset theory to explore individual differences in beliefs about the changeable nature of parenting ability. Specifically, across three correlational studies ( N = 1170), we investigated if growth mindsets about parenting related to coping in the wake of parenting setbacks and to parental engagement. Growth mindsets predicted more positive expectations and less avoidant coping after parenting challenges, and these processes, and growth mindsets, correlated with parental engagement. Across the three studies, average links between growth mindsets and the two primary outcomes of interest—avoidant coping and engagement—were r = −0.31 and r = 0.20, respectively.
... (2021) quando la sopravvalutazione è accompagnata da una bassa cura e da un'elevata indulgenza. La relazione tra overvaluation delle qualità del figlio da parte della madre e self view narcisa nel figlio, individuata nel nostro studio ed in quello precedente di van Schie e colleghi (2021) potrebbe essere spiegata dal fatto che questa visione presente nella mente della madre porti nel figlio una maggior probabilità di sviluppare opinioni di sé esageratamente positive, che tendono a mantenersi anche attraverso strategie di evitamento tese a mantenere una visione positiva di sé (Blackwellet al., 2007;Gunderson et al., 2013). Un'ulteriore considerazione merita il parenting negativo materno, predittore significativo e indipendente del narcisismo, così come misurato dalla CNS. ...
In età evolutiva, particolarmente negli anni prescolari, i tratti narcisistici, pur favorendo una visione di sé irrealistica e sensibile alle critiche, possono avere un valore adattivo. Tuttavia, nel corso dello sviluppo, è possibile che si consolidi una visione di sé narcisistica, dipendente principalmente da valutazioni esterne, che espone il bambino a oscillare tra la paura di perdita e la frenesia di acquisire segnali sul proprio valore personale. Questa particolare rappresentazione di sé sembra essere legata sia ad aspetti temperamentali, sia a stili di parenting orientati a un’eccessiva indulgenza. Questo lavoro si pone lo scopo di indagare la relazione tra precursori genitoriali (overvaluation parentale e parenting positivo e negativo) e la presenza di una self-view narcisistica nel bambino. La ricerca è stata condotta su un campione di 103 bambini seguito longitudinalmente, con una età media al primo reclutamento pari a 9.68 anni (DS = .65, r = 9-11). Dai risultati è emerso come gli stili di parenting materni e paterni hanno un ruolo differente nello sviluppo della self-view narcisistica del bambino. Il parenting negativo materno (disciplina inconsistente e dura) e l’overvaluation risultano predittori significativi indipendenti del narcisismo. Infine, a conferma di quanto già dimostrato in letteratura, narcisismo e autostima sembrano essere costrutti distinti.
... Prior work has contributed substantially to understanding the sources of children's growth versus fixed mindsets, focusing on the roles of person (vs. process) praise (Barger et al., 2022;Gunderson et al., 2013), parents' responses to their children's failures (Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016), and teachers' autonomy support (Zarrinabadi et al., 2021; see also Haimovitz & Dweck, 2017, for a review). However, far less work has been devoted to understanding why, for some children, intellectual ability has an air of exclusivity-that is, why some children view brilliance to be a precondition for school success, or why some children view intellectual ability as stemming from innate origins. ...
Adults hold a broad range of beliefs about intellectual ability. Key examples include beliefs about its malleability, its distribution in the population, whether high levels of it (“brilliance”) are necessary for success, its origins, and its responsiveness to intervention. Here, we examined the structure and motivational significance of this network of consequential beliefs in a sample of elementary school-age children (5- to 11-year-olds, N = 231; 116 girls, 112 boys, three gender nonbinary children; predominantly White and Asian children from relatively high-income backgrounds). We assessed five beliefs: (a) growth mindsets (malleability), (b) universal mindsets (distribution), (c) brilliance beliefs (necessity for success), and beliefs about ability’s (d) innateness and (e) responsiveness to intervention. Even among the youngest children, these beliefs were empirically distinguishable and also largely coherent, in that they related to each other in expected ways. Moreover, the five beliefs assessed here were differentially related to children’s learning (vs. performance) goals, preference for challenging tasks, and evaluative concern (i.e., concern that mistakes will lead others to evaluate the self negatively). Even when adjusting for age, children with growth mindsets were oriented toward learning goals and preferred challenging tasks; children who believed ability has innate origins preferred performance goals; and younger (but not older) children who thought success required brilliance expressed more concern over being evaluated. These findings speak to the multifaceted nature of children’s concepts of ability and highlight their significance for children’s achievement-related attitudes and behavior in the early school years.
... in child-directed speech may dilute some of its prima facie positivity; Gunderson et al., 2013). If this were the case, it would mean that boys are appropriately factoring external information into their assessment of their competence, whereas girls are perhaps relying more on an internal sense of deservingness and discounting the external messages. ...
Women tend to negotiate less than men, which—along with other well-documented interpersonal and structural factors—contributes to persistent gender gaps in pay for equal work. Here, we explore the developmental origins of these gender differences in negotiation. Across three studies (N = 462), we investigated 6- to 12-year-old girls’ and boys’ perceptions of negotiation (e.g., how common and permissible it is to negotiate) and gave children opportunities to negotiate for resources themselves. These opportunities were hypothetical in Studies 1 and 2 and actual in Study 3. Overall, girls and boys had similar perceptions of negotiation. However, the links between perceptions and negotiation behavior often differed by gender, especially in the context of an actual negotiation (Study 3). Boys’—but not girls’—negotiation requests were higher when they thought that (a) other children asked for more, (b) it was permissible to ask for more, (c) they would not receive backlash for asking for more, and (d) asking for more would actually get them more. In contrast, girls’ negotiation requests were uniquely predicted by how competent they thought they were at the task for which they negotiated a reward—that is, how deserving they thought they were. Notably, boys overestimated their competence (both relative to girls and relative to reality) and negotiated for more resources as a result. Understanding the early origins of gender differences in negotiation provides insight into how to prevent the emergence of such differences and dismantle persistent gender inequities in society.
... Memberikan pujian dan dukungan positif merupakan salah satu strategi efektif yang dapat diterapkan oleh orang tua untuk membangun minat dan motivasi anak dalam belajar matematika. Menurut penelitian yang dilakukan oleh Gunderson et al. (2013), jenis pujian yang diberikan orang tua dapat mempengaruhi cara pandang anak terhadap kemampuan mereka sendiri. Pujian yang berfokus pada usaha anak, seperti "Kamu sudah bekerja keras untuk menyelesaikan soal ini," dapat membantu anak mengembangkan mindset berkembang (growth mindset), yaitu keyakinan bahwa kemampuan dapat ditingkatkan melalui usaha dan ketekunan. ...
This study aims to understand the critical role of parents in supporting children's mathematics learning at the elementary school level. In this context, the research employs a qualitative approach with a case study design to explore parental involvement in facilitating mathematics comprehension at home and collaboration with teachers. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, participatory observations, and document analysis of ten purposively selected families. The results indicate that effective communication between parents and teachers, as well as the support provided at home, plays a significant role in enhancing children's understanding and motivation in learning mathematics. Parents who are actively involved in their children's learning, both through direct interaction with teachers and by facilitating learning activities at home, are proven to help children overcome challenges in learning mathematics. The study also emphasizes the importance of consistent collaboration between home and school to create a supportive learning environment. The implications of this study suggest that active parental involvement and collaboration with teachers are crucial for achieving optimal mathematics learning outcomes.
... Parents communicate their beliefs to their children through their words and behaviors, which exerts a considerable influence on their child's motivation and achievement (Eccles et al., 1993). Parental mindsets are among such parental beliefs that researchers have become increasingly interested in over recent years (e.g., Gunderson et al., 2013;Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016;Matthes & Stoeger, 2018;Muenks et al., 2015). Mindsets refer to individuals' beliefs about the nature of ability (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). ...
Parents’ beliefs about the nature of ability are communicated to their children through parent–child interactions. Parental mindsets are one of the parental beliefs that have received increasing attention over recent years. However, their role in children’s motivation and achievement outcomes remains relatively underexplored. Moreover, most existing studies have measured parental mindsets as either reported by parents themselves or perceived by children only, making it difficult to develop a comprehensive understanding of their role. Yet, parents’ mindsets and children’s perceptions of their parents’ mindsets may not be identical, and one may be more important than the other in shaping children’s motivation and achievement. Using the data from 507 third- and fourth-graders and their parents in Korea, we examined how parents’ growth and fixed mindsets, both self-reported and child-perceived, predicted children’s achievement goals, persistence, and achievement in mathematics. Whereas the growth and fixed mindsets of parents correlated negatively with each other, there was no significant relationship between self-reported and child-perceived parental mindsets. Parents’ growth mindset positively predicted children’s mastery goals. In contrast, parents’ fixed mindset negatively predicted children’s mastery goals and positively predicted children’s ability-focused and normative performance goals. Children’s mastery goals in turn positively predicted their persistence and achievement. The indirect paths from parental mindsets to children’s persistence and achievement through children’s mastery goals were also significant. In general, the child-perceived mindsets of parents demonstrated a stronger predictive power than the self-reported mindsets of parents. The underexplored role of parental mindsets is discussed concerning children’s achievement goal adoption and learning.
... Interestingly, a direct link between parents' fitness mindset and children's fitness mindset was supported in this study, in contrast to previous growth mindset research that found no significant relationship between the mindsets that parents/educators and their children/students hold (Gunderson et al., 2013;Park et al., 2016). As such, our finding supported the generational transfer of mindset of fitness. ...
... While it seems liable to assume that coaches' mindsets also will influence their athletes' mindsets, it is uncertain exactly how this unfolds. For example, researchers have revealed a discrepancy between the mindset held by parents (Gunderson et al., 2013) or teachers (Sun, 2019) and the communicated mindset messages perceived by their children or students, respectively. Such discrepancy may be caused by the challenge of communicating mindset messages following the mindset one holds, as suggested by Vella et al. (2014). ...
The overall aim of this two-part study was to develop an intervention targeting sports coaches’ mindsets about their talent as a coach (coach talent mindset, C-TM) and their athletes’ talent (athlete talent mindset, A-TM), called the GrowTMindS Intervention. In this Part I, the intervention was developed drawing on a user-centered design approach and implemented in a coach education program in
Norway. The study involved 31 coaches (5 women, 26 men) from 22 to 69 years of age, representing the sports of bandy, golf, ski sports, swimming, and volleyball. Using a mixed-methods approach, the quantitative results showed that the coaches increased their A-TM from pretest to post-test, while their C-TM, which was high at baseline, remained more challenging to target. The qualitative findings helped us understand how most coaches, through reflective processes, perceived the delivery of the intervention as sense-making and substantiated their commitment to growth talent mindsets. The qualitative findings also highlighted areas for refinement and tailoring of the intervention to target all coaches’ talent mindsets. Overall, the study was considered a necessary first step in developing an intervention showing significant and meaningful changes in coaches’ self-reported talent mindsets, consistent with the guidelines of wise psychological intervention and behavior change.
... For example, praise has been shown to increase child compliance (Leijten et al., 2016;Parpal & Maccoby, 1985), self-esteem (Felson & Sielinski, 1989), and motivational frameworks (Gunderson et al., 2013). Borrego and colleagues (2004) examined parent-child interaction patterns within a sample of maltreating and low-risk, non-maltreating parents of children ages two to six years old. ...
Child abuse is a pervasive, global problem impacting millions of children (Stoltenborgh et al., 2015). Researchers have largely relied on the use of parent-report questionnaires to examine a variety of risk factors for child abuse (see Azar, 2002; Stith et al., 2009), leaving a gap in the research regarding the link between observed parent and child behaviors and child abuse potential. Utilizing a sample of families clinically referred for child behavioral problems, the proposed study pursued a multi method approach to explore relations between parent factors (parent attachment, emotion regulation, harsh behaviors, and stress), child factors (child disruptive behaviors), and the potential for child abuse (assessed using the Brief Child Abuse Potential Inventory; BCAP; Ondersma et al., 2005). Forty-one parent-child dyads were referred to the Karitane Toddler Clinic, a mental health center near Sydney, Australia. Parents completed a series of questionnaires about themselves and their child and were also videotaped while interacting with their child in 3 play scenarios. Multiple regressions were conducted to examine parent- and child-level predictors of BCAP Abuse Risk scores. Parental romantic attachment anxiety was determined to be the only significant contributor of Abuse Risk score predictions. However, bivariate correlations demonstrated strong associations between Abuse Risk and parent emotion dysregulation and parental stress. Limitations of the study (e.g., small sample size, truncated range of Abuse Risk scores) and future directions are discussed.
... Since persistence was the lowest individual covitality indicator in all identified profiles, universal school-based interventions may specifically target persistence among adolescents. Recent studies suggest several evidence-based strategies for improving persistence, including adults being patient with students instead of quickly taking over challenging tasks, modeling persistence, noticing and praising students' efforts when they persist through a difficult task, and helping to break down challenging tasks into smaller, more manageable goals (e.g., Gunderson et al., 2013;Leonard et al., 2020Leonard et al., , 2021. In addition to universal supports, students fitting Low or Moderate covitality profiles may be potential candidates for more intensive prevention and early intervention. ...
Identifying and promoting students’ social-emotional strengths is essential in building their mental health. Covitality, representing the co-occurrence of psychological strengths, is a helpful framework for characterizing students’ well-being. This study used latent profile analysis to identify adolescents’ (n = 11,217; 50.3% female, 37.8% male; grades 9 [33.7%], 10 [21.0%], 11 [28.9%], and 12 [16.5%]) covitality patterns across 12 social-emotional health domains. We investigated whether student demographic characteristics (i.e., sex, parent educational attainment, ethnic identification) were related to profile membership. We further examined profiles’ relations to students’ proximal academic and mental health outcomes, including self-reported grades, school connectedness, life satisfaction, and psychological distress. Four covitality profiles were identified—High, Moderate-High, Moderate-Low, and Low. Profile membership was statistically significantly related to students’ sex and socioeconomic circumstances but with small effect sizes. We identified consistent differences across covitality profiles on student self-reported proximal outcomes. Overall, students in profiles with higher covitality levels (High and Moderate-High) reported (a) higher grades, school connectedness, and life satisfaction and (b) less psychological distress, with students in the High profile reporting the most favorable outcomes. Assessing students’ strengths and providing interventions focused on building strengths across domains are recommended.
... In particular, praising that emphasises children's effort, actions and strategies may develop a motivational framework in the cognitive and sociomoral domains. 31 Open access parenting is also important for general parenting practices as shown in previous studies. [32][33][34][35] Furthermore, as secondary findings, environmental factors such as enrichment lessons, group childcare and cohabitation with siblings might also be associated with positive parenting attitudes. ...
Objective
The primary objective of this study was to investigate the parenting attitudes towards children with autism spectrum disorders in early childhood in Japan.
Design
This study was a cohort study. The participants were enrolled from January 2011 to March 2014. We obtained the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders at 3 years of age, parenting attitudes and other factors from questionnaires. We divided the participants into two groups, an autism spectrum disorders group and a non-autism spectrum disorders group, and compared the parenting attitudes.
Setting
This study used data from a Japanese birth cohort study: the Japan Environment and Children’s Study, conducted across 15 regional centres in Japan.
Participants
The full dataset of the Japan Environment and Children’s Study comprised 104 059 records. We excluded 17 889 records because the answer for the autism spectrum disorders in the questionnaire was blank. As a result, we analysed the remaining 82 411 mother–child pairs.
Main outcome measures
The primary outcome variable was parenting attitudes at 3.5 years of age, which was assessed using a questionnaire. We asked respondents 16 questions related to parenting attitudes, and they answered based on their behaviours. The independent variable was the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders at 3 years of age.
Results
Of the 82 411 participants, the children with autism spectrum disorders at 3 years of age were 372 (0.45%). In most questions about parenting attitudes, the autism spectrum disorders group had unfavourable responses. The difference was particularly noticeable when the parents taught their children social discipline. Unfavourable parenting attitudes were 16.6% in the autism spectrum disorders group and 0.8% in the non-autism spectrum disorders group in the question item with the largest difference between the two groups, a significant difference.
Conclusions
Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders tended to have unfavourable attitudes, suggesting the importance of parental training.
... So far we have dwelled mostly inside the person, examining how people's motivational processes come to life and play out. And although much of our work has looked at how information or feedback from others can shape motivation (e.g., Cimpian et al., 2007;Dweck et al., 1978;Gunderson et al., 2013Gunderson et al., , 2018Kamins & Dweck, 1999;Mueller & Dweck, 1998), we had never tried to change a real-world context to promote or support students' motivation. ...
Motivation researchers study the forces that drive, select, and direct behavior. As such, we seek to understand how people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions work together as they choose and pursue goals in their world. The author begins by tracing the fortunes of the field of motivation over the course of her career, from its heyday, to its fall from prominence, to its current resurgence. In this context, she traces her own career in motivation, starting with reinforcement learning, moving to attribution theory, continuing with achievement goals, and then focusing on implicit theories or mindsets. Throughout, she and her collaborators have tried to zero in on (and often intervene on) the personal and contextual factors that enhance challenge-seeking, effective persistence, educational achievement, and mental health, as well as the factors that influence interpersonal judgments and stereotyping. More recently, she has developed an integrative theory that identifies motivation as the foundation of personality and its development, and she has collaborated on a neuroscience-based theory that identifies motivation as a key factor in intelligent decision-making. The driving theme throughout her career has been how to harness motivation to promote and fulfill human potential.
... It is also possible that the study may not have fully captured parents' provision of motivational resources. For example, parents' autonomy support (vs. control) may provide more significant motivational resources than their praise which may depend in large part on the extent to which parents focus on effort or ability (e.g., Barger et al., 2022;Gunderson et al., 2013), a distinction the study did not examine. Moreover, parents' autonomy support and control are more likely than their praise to occur in-tandem with their numeracy talk (e.g., parents use numeracy prompts while directing children's engagement), which may be more likely to lead to interactive effects because the ensuing cognitive and motivational resources can modulate one another as the practices occur. ...
Parents are considered a major resource in children’s numeracy development. The relative role of cognitive and motivational parenting practices, however, is unclear given that the two types of practices have largely been studied in isolation. The current study simultaneously estimated the contributions of several cognitive and motivational parenting practices hypothesized to be important, but which may have overlapping effects. To capture parents’ cognitive practices, the level and structure (i.e., prompts vs. statements) of 529 American parents’ (80% mothers; 65% White, 20% Black; 33% less than a bachelor’s degree) numeracy talk was coded during a challenging numeracy activity. Parents’ motivational practices were assessed by coding their autonomy support and control in the activity. Children’s (Mage = 7.5 years; 49% girls) engagement of numeracy strategies was also coded. Multilevel minute-to-minute modeling predicting children’s engagement from both cognitive and motivational parenting practices indicated that parents’ cognitive practices, particularly advanced prompts, predicted children’s subsequent engagement of numeracy strategies, which were often advanced. Parents’ motivational practices, as reflected in their autonomy support (vs. control), also foreshadowed children’s engagement. These effects of the two types of practices were independent of one another. Taken together, the findings are consistent with the idea that cognitive and motivational parenting practices provide distinct resources that can benefit children’s math learning.
... It is also possible that the study may not have fully captured parents' provision of motivational resources. For example, parents' autonomy support (vs. control) may provide more significant motivational resources than their praise which may depend in large part on the extent to which parents focus on effort or ability (e.g., Barger et al., 2022;Gunderson et al., 2013), a distinction the study did not examine. Moreover, parents' autonomy support and control are more likely than their praise to occur in-tandem with their numeracy talk (e.g., parents use numeracy prompts while directing children's engagement), which may be more likely to lead to interactive effects because the ensuing cognitive and motivational resources can modulate one another as the practices occur. ...
Parents are considered a major resource in children’s numeracy development. The relative role of cognitive and motivational parenting practices, however, is unclear given that the two types of practices have largely been studied in isolation. The current study simultaneously estimated the contributions of several cognitive and motivational parenting practices hypothesized to be important, but which may have overlapping effects. To capture parents’ cognitive practices, the level and structure (i.e., prompts vs. statements) of 529 American parents’ (80% mothers; 65% white, 20% Black; 33% less than a bachelor’s degree) numeracy talk was coded during a challenging numeracy activity. Parents’ motivational practices were assessed by coding their autonomy support and control in the activity. Children’s (Mage = 7.5 years; 49% girls) engagement of numeracy strategies was also coded. Multi-level minute-to-minute modeling predicting children’s engagement from both cognitive and motivational parenting practices indicated that parents’ cognitive practices, particularly advanced prompts, predicted children’s subsequent engagement of numeracy strategies, which were often advanced. Parents’ motivational practices, as reflected in their autonomy support (vs. control), also foreshadowed children’s engagement. These effects of the two types of practices were independent of one another. Taken together, the findings are consistent with the idea that cognitive and motivational parenting practices provide distinct resources that can benefit children’s math learning.
... En persons tankesett er ikke bundet til å vaere laerende eller låst, men påvirkes av erfaringer og laeringssituasjoner. For eksempel kan ros og tilbakemeldinger fra voksne som legger vekt på innsats og arbeidsprosess («nå har du jobbet hardt»), påvirke barns tankesett til å bli mer laerende, mens ros og tilbakemeldinger som går på barnas intelligens eller dyktighet («du er smart», «du er flink i matematikk»), kan føre til et mer låst tankesett (Gunderson et al., 2013). I PISA 2022 ble elevene spurt om hvor enige eller uenige de er i utsagnet «Intelligens er noe ved deg som du ikke kan endre så mye». ...
... By contrast, person praise focuses on children's traits or overall worth as a person (e.g., "You're really smart at this"). Different types of praise have been associated with increases in self-esteem in children (Brummelman et al., 2014;Gunderson et al., 2013;Kamins & Dweck, 1999), but only praise directed at children's effort through which they accomplished a certain task ("process praise") in early childhood has been shown to longitudinally predict academic achievement in elementary school (Gunderson, Sorhagen, et al., 2018). This is theorized to occur via children's beliefs that intelligence can be improved through effort (Gunderson, Donnellan, et al., 2018), in part based on teacher's instructional practices (Park et al., 2016). ...
Implicit and explicit self‐esteem are not commonly measured in the same children. Using a cross‐sectional design, data from 354 Croatian children (184 girls) in Grade 1 ( M age = 7.55 years) and Grade 5 ( M age = 11.58 years) were collected in Spring 2019. All children completed explicit and implicit self‐esteem measures; math and language grades were obtained. For the explicit measure, older children showed lower self‐esteem than younger children, and girls showed lower self‐esteem than boys. For the implicit measure, there were no age effects, and girls showed higher self‐esteem than boys. Although both types of self‐esteem were positively associated with academic achievement, implicit self‐esteem was associated more strongly with language than with math achievement. Discussion is provided about why self‐esteem relates to academic achievement during childhood.
... A person with a growth mindset about intelligence perceives that intelligence is malleable, and can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and instruction (Blackwell et al., 2007). There is evidence that parents' intelligence mindsets did not correlate with their children's intelligence mindsets (Gunderson et al., 2013). One explanation for the lack of correlation is that parents' mindset about intelligence may not be fully comprehensible to children (Haimovitz and Dweck, 2016). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the marketing opportunities for after-school educational services in the Chinese context by examining children’s perceptions of intelligence using visual methodology.
Design/methodology/approach
Altogether 30 Chinese children aged 9–12 studying in grades four to six were asked to draw what comes to mind for two statements: “This is an intelligent child” and “This is a child of average intelligence.” After doing the drawings, the children were interviewed face-to-face to answer questions about the personalities and social relationships of the children depicted in the two drawings that they had produced.
Findings
A child described as intelligent was imagined wearing glasses, studying hard and obtaining excellent academic results. A child described as of average intelligence was imagined as having many friends, playing a lot and experiencing tension with parents over studies. Participants had a restrictive view of intelligence and associated intelligence with academic success. They endorsed both a growth mindset and a fixed mindset of intelligence. On the one hand, they endorsed a growth mindset of intelligence as they associated intelligence with personal efforts and practices. On the other hand, participants endorsed a fixed mindset of intelligence as they tended to avoid challenges and appeared to be threatened by the success of others. Participants imagined that an intelligent child would experience poor relationships with friends.
Research limitations/implications
The findings were based on a nonprobability small sample. The study did not investigate the socialization process of such perceptions.
Practical implications
Educational services and nonschool activity service providers can position themselves as agents to help students develop meta-analytical skills in embracing challenging tasks. Marketers can develop courses and learning materials that teach children different learning strategies. They can use incentives to encourage persistence and resilience in meeting challenges. This study uncovered the emotional and social needs of intelligent children. A new market segment was identified that targets children with high intelligence. Educational service providers can design curricula and activities to support high-performing children in developing empathy and good communication skills. Educators can assist those who perform well academically to nurture genuine friendships and improve social relations with peers.
Social implications
The prevalence of the private tutoring industry in the Chinese context may introduce educational disparity, as families with low resources will not be able to afford these services. Nonprofit organizations can provide similar educational services at a low cost to bridge the gap. The narrow view of intelligence expressed by participants, and their lack of awareness of the wide range of types of intelligence, indicates that education service providers can develop the confidence of a child with average intelligence through appreciation of his or her unique talents beyond academic achievements.
Originality/value
This study explores attributes associated with intelligence among Chinese children using an innovative visual method. The marketing implications can apply to other societies where the after-school tuition market is prevalent.
... Two beliefs are usually opposed: the belief that intelligence is fixed (fixed mindset) and the belief that intelligence can grow with effort and training (growth mindset). Fixed and growth mindsets develop during childhood (Schroder et al., 2017) and are shaped through interactions with parents (Gunderson et al., 2013), teachers (Rattan et al., 2012), and classmates (Goudeau & Cimpian, 2021;King, 2020). Importantly, having a growth mindset over a fixed mindset is beneficial for well-being at school (Zeng et al., 2016) and academic success (Blackwell et al., 2007), particularly amongst underprivileged students (Sisk et al., 2018;Yeager et al., 2016). ...
Research in social psychology and education proposes that adopting a growth mindset of intelligence is an important mediator for the well-being and performance of students at school. As a consequence, wise interventions have been developed to target student mindsets and change their beliefs about how much their intelligence can grow with training and experience. However, the efficacy of mindset interventions is highly debated, as effect sizes vary widely across studies. Here, we hypothesized that the study environment and, in particular, the teacher’s mindset about intelligence is an important moderator of mindset intervention efficacy. We tested this hypothesis by randomly assigning six middle schools from underprivileged neighborhoods in the Paris area in France to a no intervention condition, a condition with mindset interventions delivered only to the students, and a condition with mindset interventions for teachers and students. The results show that the combined teacher and student mindset intervention condition was the most efficient for increasing the student’s growth mindset. This finding suggests that a short and easy-to-implement mindset intervention for teachers can help students develop a growth mindset.
Objective
The current study tested whether participating in a family‐focused preventive intervention designed to promote toddlers' self‐regulation improves parental resilience among families living in poverty.
Background
Family‐focused preventive interventions can help strengthen family functioning, but it is unclear how parents apply what they have learned to new child‐rearing challenges.
Method
Two hundred and forty‐two families with toddlers (37% White, 25% Black, 19% Latino, 17% multiracial, 2% Asian; median income = $1,555 per month) enrolled in Early Head Start were randomly assigned to the Recipe 4 Success preventive intervention or usual practice home visits. Parents reported on parental resilience, which included aspects of social problem‐solving, personal control, engagement coping, and self‐regulation, assessed 18 months after the end of the intervention.
Results
A structural equations model revealed that parents in the intervention group, compared to parents in the control group, reported greater parental resilience and used more competent strategies to address child‐rearing challenges (β = .33, p = .03). Subgroup analyses indicated that the intervention effects were similar across families with different demographic characteristics.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates how a family‐focused preventive intervention designed to improve parents' skills in one specific domain at one point in their toddlers' development can have positive ripple effects, enhancing parental resilience in the future.
Implications
These findings reinforce the potential widespread value of providing rigorous, evidence‐based family‐focused preventive interventions during early childhood.
In this study, we aimed to determine the role of parental praise and child affect in the neural processes underlying parent‐child interactions, utilizing functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning. We characterized the dynamic changes in interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) between parents and children (4–6 years old, n = 40 dyads) during a cognitively challenging task. We then examined how changes in parent‐child INS are influenced by parental feedback and child affect. Parent‐child INS showed a quadratic change over time, indicating a decelerated decline during the interaction period. The relationship of parental praise, in the form of positive feedback, to change in INS was contingent upon the child's positive affect during the task. The highest levels of INS were observed when praise was present and child affect was positive. The left temporo‐parietal regions of the child and the right dorsolateral prefrontal and right temporo‐parietal regions of the parent demonstrated the strongest INS. The dynamic change in INS during the interaction was associated with children's independent performance on a standardized test of visuospatial processing. This research, leveraging fNIRS hyperscanning, elucidates the neural dynamics underlying the interaction between parent praise and child positive affect, thereby contributing to our broader understanding of parent‐child dynamics.
Research Highlights
The level of interpersonal neural synchrony between parents and children dynamically varies during a cognitively challenging (tangram) task.
The left temporo‐parietal regions of the child and the right dorsolateral prefrontal and right temporo‐parietal regions of the parent demonstrate the strongest parent‐child neural synchrony.
The relationship between parental praise (positive feedback) and parent‐child neural synchrony is contingent upon child positive affect during the task.
Change in parent‐child neural synchrony relates to children's performance on an independent visuospatial processing measure.
Children vary in how sensitive they are to experiences, with consequences for their developmental outcomes. In the current study, we investigated how behavioral sensitivity at age 3 years predicts mental health in middle childhood. Using a novel repeated measures design, we calculated child sensitivity to multiple psychological and social influences: parent praise, parent stress, child mood, and child sleep. We conceptualized sensitivity as the strength and direction of the relationship between psychosocial influences and child behavior, operationalized as toothbrushing time, at age 3 years. When children were 5–7 years old ( n = 60), parents reported on children's internalizing and externalizing problems. Children who were more sensitive to their parents’ praise at age 3 had fewer internalizing ( r = −0.37, p = 0.016, p FDR = 0.042) and externalizing ( r = −0.35, p = 0.021, p FDR = 0.042) problems in middle childhood. Higher average parent praise also marginally predicted fewer externalizing problems ( r = −0.33, p = 0.006, p FDR = 0.057). Child sensitivity to mood predicted fewer internalizing ( r = −0.32, p = 0.013, p FDR = 0.042) and externalizing ( r = −0.38, p = 0.003, p FDR = 0.026) problems. By capturing variability in how children respond to daily fluctuations in their environment, we can contribute to the early prediction of mental health problems and improve access to early intervention services for children and families who need them most.
Research Highlights
Children differ in how strongly their behavior depends on psychosocial factors including parent praise, child mood, child sleep, and parent stress.
Children who are more sensitive to their parents’ praise at age 3 have fewer internalizing and externalizing problems at age 5–7 years.
Child sensitivity to mood also predicts fewer internalizing and externalizing problems.
This study aimed to establish growth mindset indicators and a growth mindset measurement scale for Thai children residing in the five provinces bordering the southern border. The research approach employed a mixed methodology consisting of the following five steps -Step 1:identifying indicators of a growth mindset, Step 2: examining the growth mindset indicators, Step 3: constructing the growth mindset assessment instrument and performing a secondary confirmatory component analysis, Step 4:establishing standard criteria (norms) for the growth mindset assessment tool, and Step 5: studying the growth perspective of children located in the five southern border provinces. The research findings indicated that the growth mindset indicator comprised three elements: effort and challenge management, growth from failure, and self-efficacy, and 9 indicators: 1) the perception of intelligence set at birth (genetic), not by environmental influences, 2) the perception of being scared of difficult tasks, 3) the perception related to enough effort for accomplishment, 4) the lack of enthusiasm for solving problems, 5) the rejection of challenges since initial stage, 6) the refusal to learn too difficult things, 7) the confidence of their own problem solving skills, 8) the leadership, and 9) the assertiveness . The entirety of the nine-item survey possessed the subsequent reliability values:.742,.728,.726, and.718 for the individual components and the entire scales, respectively. The findings of the second order confirmatory factor analysis of growth mindset indicators were fitted. The Factor Loadings(𝛽) for each component were positive and statistically significant at the .01 level. The norms of Thai children in the five southern border provinces’ growth mindsets had a scaled of extended t value between 11.19 and 74.67, based on the usual growth mindset requirements. The findings of the investigation on the growth mindset of Thai children in the five southern border provinces have been obtained, the average was precisely 36.34, students Songkhla Province the greatest mean, following by Narathiwat, and Yala Province got the lowest average.
Consisting of three logically aligned sub-studies, the current research explored the features and mechanisms involved in aligning mindsets and pedagogies among teachers in upper-secondary education. In Study 1, 114 teachers participated in a two-round questionnaire survey investigating the descriptive characteristics of mindset and pedagogy. Two groups of teachers (N = 12) were semi-structure-interviewed in Study 2 to explore how these features were reflected in their teaching. Study 3 (N = 46) comprised focus-group interviews identifying the underlying mechanism determining which and how situational factors moderate the correspondence between mindset and pedagogy. Results indicated that teachers in upper secondary education endorsed mixed pedagogies despite their mindsets. The mixing style was characterized by both process-focused and trait-focused pedagogical thinking, and both mastery-oriented and performance-oriented pedagogical practices, with variable persistence and differential instructions. Situations related to cultural orientation, educational system, social atmosphere and individual experiences moderated the alignment of mindset with the corresponding pedagogy. The results offer insights into how to validate mindset interventions concerning the adjustment of situations to educational surroundings.
This study explores how caregiver–child scientific conversation during storybook reading focusing on the challenges or achievements of famous female scientists impacts preschoolers' mindset, beliefs about success, and persistence. Caregiver–child dyads ( N = 202, 100 female, 35% non‐White, aged 4–5, ƒ = .15) were assigned to one of three storybook conditions, highlighting the female scientist's achievements , effort , or, in a baseline condition, neither. Children were asked about their mindset, presented with a persistence task, and asked about their understanding of effort and success. Findings demonstrate that storybooks highlighting effort are associated with growth mindset, attribution of success to hard work, and increased persistence. Caregiver language echoed language from the assigned storybook, showing the importance of reading storybooks emphasizing hard work.
Despite extensive exploration of parental autonomy support and psychological control, certain ambiguities exist regarding their relationships with children’s intelligence mindsets and academic outcomes. Based on a sample of 484 Chinese elementary school students, we aimed to elucidate the distinct roles of parental autonomy support and psychological control in predicting children’s academic engagement and achievement. Additionally, we examined the potential mediating effects of children’s intelligence mindsets in these relationships. Our findings revealed children’s growth mindset acted as a mediator in the link between parental autonomy support and children’s behavioral engagement. Conversely, children’s fixed mindset mediated the pathway from parental psychological control to children’s disengagement. Moreover, a multi-group analysis unveiled that the impact of parental autonomy support was more pronounced among boys who also exhibited greater susceptibility to the adverse influence of a fixed mindset. This study contributes to our understanding of the psychological mechanisms and emphasizes the significance of parental autonomy support in cultivating children’s growth mindset.
In Higher Education fun can have a supportive effect on learning. This book reveals how students playful learning can be accomplished. Within the concept of Narrative Gamification presented, learning is designed as a playful experience. Narratives play a pivotal role here, intertwining curricular contents and objectives with learners' and teachers' life-worlds. In his seminal work, Swen Koerner grounds this approach, showcases practical implementation strategies, and exhibits the empirical effects of this teaching method. The book offers a scholarly yet application-oriented access to Narrative Gamification. Thus, it provides inspiration to those teaching at universities who wish to expand their teaching portfolio – transcending the confines of sports science.
People who take on challenges and persevere longer are more likely to succeed in life. But individuals often avoid exerting effort, and there is limited experimental research investigating whether we can learn to value effort. We developed a paradigm to test the hypothesis that people can learn to value effort and will seek effortful challenges if directly incentivized to do so. We also dissociate the effects of rewarding people for choosing effortful challenges and performing well. The results provide limited evidence that rewarding effort increased people’s willingness to choose harder tasks when rewards were no longer offered (near transfer). There was also mixed evidence that rewarding effort increased willingness to choose harder tasks in another unrelated and unrewarded task (far transfer). These heterogeneous results highlight the need for further research to understand when this paradigm may be the most effective for increasing and generalizing the value of effort.
Objectives. Previous literature has primarily viewed physical effort as an aversive experience. However, recent research suggests that effort can also be valued positively. These differences in approach and avoidance tendencies toward physical effort may play a key role in the self-regulation of physical activity behaviors. The aim of this study was to develop a scale that measures these tendencies and contributes to a better understanding of physical effort and how it affects behavior.
Methods. The Physical Effort Scale (PES) was developed in Study 1 based on expert evaluations (n = 9) and cognitive interviews (n = 10). In Study 2 (n = 680, 69% female), content validity and dimensional structure were examined using principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Item reduction was conducted using item response theory. Preliminary construct validity was explored using regression. Study 3 (n = 297, 71% female) was used to validate dimensional structure, internal consistency, and construct validity, and to assess test-retest reliability.
Results. In Study 1, 44 items were rated for content validity, of which 18 were selected and refined based on cognitive interviews. Analyses from Study 2 allowed reducing the scale to 8 items with a two-dimension structure: Tendency to approach (n = 4) and to avoid physical effort (n = 4). The two subscales showed high internal consistency (α = 0.897 for the approach dimension and 0.913 for the avoidance dimension) and explained usual levels of physical activity, providing preliminary evidence of construct validity. Study 3 confirmed the two-dimension structure with high internal consistency (α = 0.907 and 0.916 for the approach and avoidance dimension, respectively) and revealed acceptable test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation >0.66). Patterns of associations with other constructs showed expected relationships, confirming the concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity of the scale.
Conclusions. The PES is a valid and reliable measure of individual differences in the valuation of physical effort. This scale can assess the propensity to engage in physically demanding tasks in non-clinical populations. The PES and its manual are available in the Supplementary Material.
Praise is stated as a good performance resource that can increase the individual's sense of competence and motivate their new learning. When the literature is examined, the importance of communication with the child in parenting is emphasized, especially the power of the words used by the parents. Parental praise is expressed as parents' repetition of the desired behaviors in children and giving feedback that will make them feel warm and sensitive with their words and behaviors in order to indicate the satisfaction felt towards them. Studies emphasize that parental praise is an important method in child development and a method that parents use very often. It is reported that many parents prefer to use praise as a tool to build self-confidence in their child. In terms of positive discipline, it is assumed that praise creates a reward value as a result of operant conditioning and can affect behavioral acquisition in the child's development. The type of parental praise plays an important role in how children form their self-image. It is in these early relationships that children first begin to feel capable, competent, and loved. Although praise is expressed as a source of motivation when it cannot be used beneficially, it can become harmful to the child when used incorrectly or excessively. At this point, the content of the praise is important. In this study, the concept of parental praise is discussed, the content of praise, which is seen as a reference to motivation, is examined and its benefits for child development are tried to be explained.
ภูมิหลังและวัตถุประสงค์: การจัดการเรียนรู้โดยใช้ปรากฏการณ์เป็นฐาน (Phenomenon-Based Learning) เป็นการจัดการเรียนรู้รูปแบบหนึ่งที่มีประสิทธิภาพ น่าสนใจสำหรับเด็ก และสอดคล้องกับแนวทางการพัฒนาคุณลักษณะกรอบความคิดเติบโต การจัดการเรียนรู้โดยใช้ปรากฏการณ์เป็นฐานคือการเรียนรู้ที่เริ่มต้นจากปรากฏการณ์ที่เกิดขึ้นจริงรอบตัวเด็ก การวิจัยนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อ (1) ศึกษาดัชนีประสิทธิผลของแผนการจัดประสบการณ์การเรียนรู้โดยใช้ปรากฏการณ์เป็นฐาน และ (2) เปรียบเทียบคุณลักษณะกรอบความคิดเติบโตของเด็กวัยอนุบาลก่อนและหลังการทดลอง ระเบียบวิธีการวิจัย: กลุ่มตัวอย่าง คือ เด็กวัยอนุบาล อายุ 3 – 4 ปี จำนวน 25 คน ใช้เวลาในการทดลองครั้งละ 50 นาที ติดต่อกันสัปดาห์ละ 4 ครั้ง รวม 8 สัปดาห์ ขั้นตอนการจัดประสบการณ์จำแนกเป็น 4 ระยะ ได้แก่ (1) เลือกปรากฏการณ์ที่สนใจและสังเกตปรากฏการณ์ที่ศึกษาร่วมกัน (2) กำหนดปัญหาและตั้งคำถามเกี่ยวกับปรากฏการณ์ที่สนใจ (3) การลงมือปฏิบัติผ่านวิธีการสืบเสาะโดยใช้ปัญหาเป็นฐาน (4) นำเสนอข้อมูล สะท้อนคิด และประเมินตามสภาพจริง เครื่องมือที่ใช้ในการเก็บข้อมูล คือ แบบประเมินคุณลักษณะกรอบความคิดเติบโตของเด็กวัยอนุบาล วิเคราะห์ข้อมูลโดยการหาค่าเฉลี่ย ส่วนเบี่ยงเบนมาตรฐาน ดัชนีประสิทธิผล และสถิติทดสอบที ผลการวิจัย: (1) ดัชนีประสิทธิผลของแผนการจัดประสบการณ์การเรียนรู้โดยใช้ปรากฏการณ์เป็นฐาน มีค่าเท่ากับ 0.81 แสดงว่า เด็กวัยอนุบาลมีการพัฒนาคุณลักษณะกรอบความคิดเติบโตเพิ่มขึ้น คิดเป็นร้อยละ 81.27 และ (2) เด็กวัยอนุบาลมีคุณลักษณะกรอบความคิดเติบโตหลังการทดลองสูงกว่าก่อนการทดลองอย่างมีนัยสำคัญทางสถิติที่ระดับ .05 สะท้อนให้เชื่อว่า การจัดประสบการณ์การเรียนรู้โดยใช้ปรากฏการณ์เป็นฐานสามารถนำไปใช้ในการเสริมสร้างคุณลักษณะกรอบความคิดเติบโตของเด็กวัยอนุบาลได้ สรุปผล: การวิจัยพบว่าการใช้ปรากฏการณ์ในแผนการเรียนรู้ส่งผลให้เด็กวัยอนุบาลพัฒนาคุณลักษณะกรอบความคิดเติบโตเพิ่มขึ้นถึงร้อยละ 81.27 และมีความสำคัญทางสถิติที่ระดับ .05 ส่งผลทำให้เชื่อว่าแผนการนี้เป็นทางเลือกที่มีประสิทธิภาพในการเสริมสร้างพัฒนาการความคิดเติบโตของเด็กวัยอนุบาลได้และมีผลสำคัญทางสถิต
Two studies were conducted to determine how gender and age moderate the long‐term and post‐failure motivational consequences of person versus performance praise. In Study 1, fourth‐ and fifth‐grade students (n = 93) engaged in a puzzle task while receiving either no praise, person praise, product praise, or process praise. Following a subsequent failure experience, behavioural measures indicated that product and process praise enhanced motivation and person praise dampened motivation for girls, but that there were few effects of praise on subsequent motivation for boys. In Study 2, a parallel procedure with preschool children (n = 76) showed that person, product, and process praise all enhanced motivation, relative to neutral feedback, for both girls and boys.
Examines the role of exposure to speech in children's early vocabulary growth. It is generally assumed that individual differences in vocabulary depend, in large part, on variations in learning capacity. However, variations in exposure have not been systematically explored. In this study vocabulary growth rates are characterized for each of 22 children by using data obtained at several time points from 14 to 26 mo. A substantial relation between individual differences in vocabulary acquisition and variations in the amount that particular mothers speak to their children was found. It is argued that the relation between amount of parent speech and vocabulary growth reflects parent effects on the child, rather than child-ability effects on the parent or hereditary factors. It was also found that gender is an important factor in rate of vocabulary growth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Girls show greater evidence than boys of learned helplessness in achievement situations with adult (but not peer) evaluators: They attribute their failures to lack of ability rather than motivation and thus show impaired performance under failure. Two studies are reported linking sex differences in attributions to adults' use of evaluative feedback. Study 1, with 52 4th graders and 27 5th graders, revealed that both the contingencies of feedback in classrooms and the attributions made by teachers were ones that would render negative evaluation more indicative of ability for girls than boys. For example, negative evaluation of girls' performance referred almost exclusively to intellectual inadequacies, whereas 45% of boys' work-related criticism referred to nonintellectual aspects. Moreover, teachers attributed the boys' failures to lack of motivation significantly more than they did the girls' failures. In Study 2, with 60 5th graders, teacher–boy and teacher–girl contingencies of work-related criticism observed in classrooms were programmed in an experimental situation. Both boys and girls receiving the teacher–girl contingency were more likely to view subsequent failure feedback from that evaluator as indicative of their ability. Implications for developmental theories and for development are addressed. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Five experiments supported the hypothesis that peoples' implicit theories about the fixedness versus malleability of human attributes (entity versus incremental theories) predict differences in degree of social stereotyping. Relative to those holding an incremental theory, people holding an entity theory made more stereotypical trait judgments of ethnic and occupational groups (Experiments 1, 2, and 5 ) and formed more extreme trait judgments of novel groups ( Experiment 3 ). Implicit theories also predicted the degree to which people attributed stereotyped traits to inborn group qualities versus environmental forces (Experiment 2). Manipulating implicit theories affected level of stereotyping (Experiment 4), suggesting that implicit theories can play a causal role. Finally, implicit theories predicted unique and substantial variance in stereotype endorsement after controlling for the contributions of other stereotype-relevant individual difference variables (Experiment 5). These results highlight the importance of people's basic assumptions about personality in stereotyping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Past work has documented and described major patterns of adaptive and maladaptive behavior: the mastery-oriented and the helpless patterns. In this article, we present a research-based model that accounts for these patterns in terms of underlying psychological processes. The model specifies how individuals' implicit theories orient them toward particular goals and how these goals set up the different patterns. Indeed, we show how each feature (cognitive, affective, and behavioral) of the adaptive and maladaptive patterns can be seen to follow directly from different goals. We then examine the generality of the model and use it to illuminate phenomena in a wide variety of domains. Finally, we place the model in its broadest context and examine its implications for our understanding of motivational and personality processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This research sought to integrate C. S. Dweck and E. L. Leggett's (1988) model with attribution theory. Three studies tested the hypothesis that theories of intelligence—the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) versus fixed (entity theory)—would predict (and create) effort versus ability attributions, which would then mediate mastery-oriented coping. Study 1 revealed that, when given negative feedback, incremental theorists were more likely than entity theorists to attribute to effort. Studies 2 and 3 showed that incremental theorists were more likely than entity theorists to take remedial action if performance was unsatisfactory. Study 3, in which an entity or incremental theory was induced, showed that incremental theorists' remedial action was mediated by their effort attributions. These results suggest that implicit theories create the meaning framework in which attributions occur and are important for understanding motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A sample of 194 3rd graders and 279 junior high school students completed questionnaires measuring achievement-related beliefs before and after they took a regularly scheduled mathematics exam. Girls rated their ability lower, expected to do less well, were less likely than boys to attribute success to high ability and failure to luck, and were more likely to attribute failure to low ability. Girls also reported less pride in their success and a stronger desire to hide their paper after failure and were less likely to believe that success could be achieved through effort. Further associations were observed between attributions and the belief that success could be achieved by effort on one hand and a desire to avoid math tasks and future performance expectations on the other. The results expand understanding of achievement-related beliefs that might explain gender differences in performance and in future course and occupational choices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Predicted that sex differences in learned helplessness (attributions of failure to uncontrollable factors) and the impaired performance associated with it would be agent specific. Two experiments were conducted with 105 female and 111 male 4th and 5th graders. Among girls, failure feedback from adults led to little improvement in performance on a series of digit-letter substitution problems, but failure from peers led to immediate and sustained improvement. Among boys, however, failure feedback from adults led to rapid improvement, but failure from peers led to no improvement over trials. Moreover, girls' and boys' attributions for failure varied systematically with the agent of evaluation. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent cognitive-developmental research has contributed much to our understanding of children's stereo-typing. The present research identified another factor influencing stereotyping—children's theories about the malleability of human attributes. In two studies, 122 sixth graders learned about several different students' be-haviors in unknown schools. In Study 1, they judged a school characterized by mostly negative behaviors, and in Study 2 they judged two schools (characterized by either mostly negative or positive behaviors). Across studies, children with a fixed view of personality (relative to those with a more malleable view of personality) made more extreme trait ratings of both the "positive" and "negative" schools, generalized their trait judg-ments to an unknown student, perceived greater within-school similarity and between-school differences, and showed less desire to interact with students in the "negative" school. Ways in which examining these theories may broaden our understanding of the origins of stereotyping and how to lessen it are discussed.
Smiley, Patricia A., and Dweck, Carol S. Individual Differences in Achievement Goals among Young Children. Child Development, 1994 65, 1723–1743. Developmental research has generally not found evidence of helpless responses to failure in young children; a prevailing view is that young children lack the cognitive prerequisite for helplessness. However, recent evidence suggests that even preschoolers are vulnerable to helplessness in some situations. In the present study with 4- and 5-year-olds, we tested a goal-confidence model that predicts achievement behavior during failure for older children. We first categorized preschoolers' orientations toward “learning” or “performance” goals based on their preference for a challenging or nonchallenging task. As for older children, goal orientation was independent of ability and predicted cognitions and emotions during failure. Further, consistent with the model, within a learning goal, children displayed the mastery-oriented pattern regardless of confidence level, whereas within a performance goal, children with low confidence were most susceptible to helplessness. These behavior patterns were found on a second task as well. Thus, our findings show that individual differences in achievement goals emerge very early.
This prospective study examined the contribution of maternal history of depression, mothers' cognitive style, mothers' parenting style, and stressful life events to depressive cognitions in 240 young adolescents. Mothers and adolescents were assessed annually over 3 years starting in sixth grade. The cognitions examined were derived from cognitive models of depression and included self-worth, attributional style, and hopelessness. Maternal history of depression was associated with all three types of negative cognitions in offspring; maternal parenting style and stressful life events significantly incremented the prediction of teens' negative cognitions beyond maternal depression. Adolescents' self-worth was significantly predicted by low maternal acceptance. Attributional style was associated with maternal attributional style for child-focused events, and significantly predicted by maternal psychological control and negative life events. Hopelessness was predicted by high levels of stressful life events, particularly among youth with low self-worth.
In this study, we examined the role of three social learning mechanisms in the development of undergraduates' depressogenic cognitive styles: modeling of parents' negative cognitive styles; negative inferential feedback from parents regarding the causes and consequences of stressful events in the child's life; and negative parenting practices. We obtained partial support for each of the three hypotheses. Compared to the parents of cognitively low-risk students, cognitively high-risk students' mothers exhibited more negative dysfunctional attitudes and inferential styles themselves; high-risk students' fathers showed less emotional acceptance and warmth; and high-risk students' mothers and fathers both communicated more stable, global attributional feedback and negative consequence feedback for stressful events in their children's lives. In addition, both parents' inferential feedback and fathers' emotional acceptance predicted their undergraduate children's likelihood of developing an episode of major or minor depression or the subtype of hopelessness depression during a 2.5-year prospective follow-up period, with some of these predictive associations mediated totally or in part by the students' cognitive vulnerability status.
Nuances in how adults talk about ability may have important consequences for children's sustained involvement and success in an activity. In this study, I tested the hypothesis that children would be less motivated while performing a novel activity if they were told that boys or girls in general are good at this activity (generic language) than if they were told that a particular boy or girl is good at it (non-generic language). Generic language may be detrimental because it expresses normative societal expectations regarding performance. If these expectations are negative, they may cause children to worry about confirming them; if positive, they may cause worries about failing to meet them. Moreover, generic statements may be threatening because they imply that performance is the result of stable traits rather than effort. Ninety-seven 4- to 7-year-olds were asked to play a game in which they succeeded at first but then made a few mistakes. Since young children remain optimistic in achievement situations until the possibility of failure is made clear, I hypothesized that 4- and 5-year-olds would not be affected by the implications of generic language until after they made mistakes; 6- and 7-year-olds, however, may be susceptible earlier. As expected, the older children who heard that boys or girls are good at this game displayed lower motivation (e.g., more negative emotions, lower perceived competence) from the start, while they were still succeeding and receiving praise. Four- and 5-year-olds who heard these generic statements had a similar reaction, but only after they made mistakes. These findings demonstrate that exposure to generic language about ability can be an obstacle to children's motivation and, potentially, their success.
Prior studies indicate that children vary widely in their mathematical knowledge by the time they enter preschool and that this variation predicts levels of achievement in elementary school. In a longitudinal study of a diverse sample of 44 preschool children, we examined the extent to which their understanding of the cardinal meanings of the number words (e.g., knowing that the word "four" refers to sets with 4 items) is predicted by the "number talk" they hear from their primary caregiver in the early home environment. Results from 5 visits showed substantial variation in parents' number talk to children between the ages of 14 and 30 months. Moreover, this variation predicted children's knowledge of the cardinal meanings of number words at 46 months, even when socioeconomic status and other measures of parent and child talk were controlled. These findings suggest that encouraging parents to talk about number with their toddlers, and providing them with effective ways to do so, may positively impact children's school achievement.
Previous research has demonstrated that generic praise ("good drawer") is related to children giving up after failure because failure implies the lack of a critical trait (e.g., drawing ability). Conversely, nongeneric praise ("good job drawing") is related to mastery motivation because it implies that success is related to effort. Yet children may receive a mixture of these praise types (i.e., inconsistent praise), the effects of which are unclear. We tested how inconsistent praise influenced two components of motivation: self-evaluation and persistence. Kindergarteners (N=135) were randomly assigned to one of five conditions in which consistency of praise type was varied. After two failure scenarios, children reported self-evaluations and persistence. Results indicated that more nongeneric praise related linearly to greater motivation, yet self-evaluation and persistence were impacted differently by inconsistent praise types. Hearing even a small amount of generic praise reduced persistence, whereas hearing a small amount of nongeneric praise preserved self-evaluation.
Important to understanding the process by which parents' control shapes children's motivation is identifying the time frame in which it does so. To this end, mothers and their 4-year-old children were observed interacting for 15 min while working on a challenging task twice over 6 months. Mothers' control and children's mastery orientation were coded in 1-min intervals at both times. Analyses over the 6 months indicated that mothers' heightened control foreshadowed children's dampened mastery because mothers' control was stable over time. Analyses over the 15-min interactions revealed that the more controlling mothers were one minute, the less mastery oriented children were the next minute, adjusting for their earlier mastery. Moreover, when mothers began these interactions highly controlling, children's mastery was particularly likely to decrease over the 15 min. Taken together, the results suggest the effect of mothers' control on children's mastery is immediate and maintained through mothers' continued controlling practices.
Developmental research has generally not found evidence of helpless responses to failure in young children; a prevailing view is that young children lack the cognitive prerequisite for helplessness. However, recent evidence suggests that even preschoolers are vulnerable to helplessness in some situations. In the present study with 4- and 5-year-olds, we tested a goal-confidence model that predicts achievement behavior during failure for older children. We first categorized preschoolers' orientations toward "learning" or "performance" goals based on their preference for a challenging or nonchallenging task. As for older children, goal orientation was independent of ability and predicted cognitions and emotions during failure. Further, consistent with the model, within a learning goal, children displayed the mastery-oriented pattern regardless of confidence level, whereas within a performance goal, children with low confidence were most susceptible to helplessness. These behavior patterns were found on a second task as well. Thus, our findings show that individual differences in achievement goals emerge very early.
Praise for ability is commonly considered to have beneficial effects on motivation. Contrary to this popular belief, six studies demonstrated that praise for intelligence had more negative consequences for students' achievement motivation than praise for effort. Fifth graders praised for intelligence were found to care more about performance goals relative to learning goals than children praised for effort. After failure, they also displayed less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, and worse task performance than children praised for effort. Finally, children praised for intelligence described it as a fixed trait more than children praised for hard work, who believed it to be subject to improvement. These findings have important implications for how achievement is best encouraged, as well as for more theoretical issues, such as the potential cost of performance goals and the socialization of contingent self-worth.
Conventional wisdom suggests that praising a child as a whole or praising his or her traits is beneficial. Two studies tested the hypothesis that both criticism and praise that conveyed person or trait judgments could send a message of contingent worth and undermine subsequent coping. In Study 1, 67 children (ages 5-6 years) role-played tasks involving a setback and received 1 of 3 forms of criticism after each task: person, outcome, or process criticism. In Study 2, 64 children role-played successful tasks and received either person, outcome, or process praise. In both studies, self-assessments, affect, and persistence were measured on a subsequent task involving a setback. Results indicated that children displayed significantly more "helpless" responses (including self-blame) on all dependent measures after person criticism or praise than after process criticism or praise. Thus person feedback, even when positive, can create vulnerability and a sense of contingent self-worth.
Young children's everyday scientific thinking often occurs in the context of parent-child interactions. In a study of naturally occurring family conversation, parents were three times more likely to explain science to boys than to girls while using interactive science exhibits in a museum. This difference in explanation occurred despite the fact that parents were equally likely to talk to their male and female children about how to use the exhibits and about the evidence generated by the exhibits. The findings suggest that parents engaged in informal science activities with their children may be unintentionally contributing to a gender gap in children's scientific literacy well before children encounter formal science instruction in grade school.
The authors argue against a purely behavioral definition of praise as verbal reinforcement in favor of the view that praise may serve to undermine, enhance, or have no effect on children's intrinsic motivation, depending on a set of conceptual variables. Provided that praise is perceived as sincere, it is particularly beneficial to motivation when it encourages performance attributions to controllable causes, promotes autonomy, enhances competence without an overreliance on social comparisons, and conveys attainable standards and expectations. The motivational consequences of praise also can be moderated by characteristics of the recipient, such as age, gender, and culture. Methodological considerations, such as including appropriate control groups and measuring postfailure outcomes, are stressed, and directions for future research are highlighted.
How different are the concepts held by children who grow up in a North American middle class neighborhood and by children who grow up in a rural Malagasy fishing village? By probing Malagasy children's and adults' conceptual representations of human and animal kind, biological inheritance, innate potential and family relations, the studies presented in this Monograph address current debates about the acquisition and the nature of concepts in the domains of folkbiology and folksociology. Cross-cultural and developmental studies of this kind bear on the hypothesis that conceptual development in these domains is supported and constrained by innate conceptual content. If so, one would expect cross-cultural universality in the relevant adult concepts and their early emergence in childhood regardless of widely different input conditions. We chose to conduct these studies among the Vezo of Madagascar because the ethnographic literature has attributed to them folkbiological and folksociological theories that are radically different, even in commensurable, with those of North American adults. Vezo therefore provide a challenging test for the innate conceptual constraints hypothesis.Four studies probed aspects of biological and sociological reasoning of Vezo children, adolescents and adults through a number of adoption scenarios. Despite ethnographic reports to the contrary, we found cross-cultural convergence in adult concepts of biological inheritance, but the pattern of development of this concept differed greatly from that seen in North America. Moreover, in agreement with the ethnographic literature, we found that Vezo adults have constructed a distinctive theory of social group identity. However, we found that children's reasoning in this domain is under the influence of endogenous constraints that are overturned in the course of development. Finally, we found cross-cultural convergence in adults' concept of species kind, as well as evidence for the early emergence of this concept. In light of these findings, we discuss the nature of the constraints on children's conceptual representations, the developmental process through which the adults' concepts are constructed, and relations between Vezotheories of folkbiology and folksociology.
Two studies explored the role of implicit theories of intelligence in adolescents' mathematics achievement. In Study 1 with 373 7th graders, the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) predicted an upward trajectory in grades over the two years of junior high school, while a belief that intelligence is fixed (entity theory) predicted a flat trajectory. A mediational model including learning goals, positive beliefs about effort, and causal attributions and strategies was tested. In Study 2, an intervention teaching an incremental theory to 7th graders (N=48) promoted positive change in classroom motivation, compared with a control group (N=43). Simultaneously, students in the control group displayed a continuing downward trajectory in grades, while this decline was reversed for students in the experimental group.
The authors examined cultural differences in parents' responses to their children's performance. In Study 1 (N = 421), Chinese 5th graders reported that their parents de-emphasized their academic success and emphasized their academic failure, whereas their American counterparts reported that their parents did the opposite. This partially accounted for Chinese (vs. American) children responding less positively to success and more negatively to failure. In Study 2 (N = 128), Chinese and American mothers' responses to their 4th and 5th graders' performance were observed in the laboratory. The cultural differences in children's reports of parents' responses documented in Study 1 were replicated; mothers' responses were also associated with children's subsequent performance. In addition, Chinese mothers were more involved than were American mothers, but their affect was similar. Taken together, the results suggest that parents' responses to children's performance may be a channel for cultural transmission and perpetuation of responses to performance.
The authors tested a developmental model of children's theories about intelligence in kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade children by using paper-and-pencil maze tasks. Older children were more likely than younger children to espouse learning goals (e.g., that they preferred difficult mazes to improve their skill), and less likely to espouse performance goals (e.g., that they preferred easy mazes to be successful). Children in all 3 age groups reported stronger beliefs in the malleability of intelligence than the stability of intelligence. In general, the results supported the authors' hypotheses about developmental change in children's theory-like conceptions of intelligence: Beliefs, goals, and motivation were related in expected ways for second and fourth graders more than for kindergartners. The authors discussed contextual influences on children's beliefs and the development of children's conceptualizations of intelligence.
This research sought to integrate C. S. Dweck and E. L. Leggett's (1988) model with attribution theory. Three studies tested the hypothesis that theories of intelligence-the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) versus fixed (entity theory)-would predict (and create) effort versus ability attributions, which would then mediate mastery-oriented coping. Study 1 revealed that, when given negative feedback, incremental theorists were more likely than entity theorists to attribute to effort. Studies 2 and 3 showed that incremental theorists were more likely than entity theorists to take remedial action if performance was unsatisfactory. Study 3, in which an entity or incremental theory was induced, showed that incremental theorists' remedial action was mediated by their effort attributions. These results suggest that implicit theories create the meaning framework in which attributions occur and are important for understanding motivation.
The present study examines mother-child conversations about gender, to examine (1) children's essentialist beliefs about gender, and (2) the role of maternal input in fostering such beliefs. We videotaped 72 mothers and their sons/daughters (mean ages 2.7, 4.7, or 6.7) discussing a picture book that depicted stereotypical and counter-stereotypical gendered activities (e.g., a boy playing football; a woman race-car driver). Mothers and children also completed measures of gender stereotyping and gender constancy. Results indicate more explicit endorsement of gender stereotypes among children than among mothers. Indeed, mothers provided little in the way of explicit stereotyped input. Nonetheless, mothers expressed gender concepts through a number of more implicit means, including reference to categories of gender (generics), labeling of gender, and contrasting males versus females. Gender-stereotype endorsement from children emerged early (by 2-1/2 years of age), but also underwent important developmental changes, most notably a rapid increase between 2 and 4 years of age in the focus on generic categories of gender. Variation in speech (across individuals and across contexts) cannot be characterized along a single dimension of degree of gender-typing; rather, there seemed to be differences in how focused a speaker was on gender (or not), with some speakers providing more talk about gender (both stereotyped and non-stereotyped) and others providing less such talk. Finally, there were variations in both mother and child speech as a function of child gender and gender of referent. In sum, by age 2, there is much essentialist content in mother-child conversations, even for mothers who express gender egalitarian beliefs. Mothers' linguistic input conveys subtle messages about gender from which children may construct their own essentialist beliefs.
To examine gender differences in attributions for success and failure across subject areas, the Survey of Achievement Responsibility (SOAR), a school-related attribution scale, was administered to a randomly selected sample from a large urban school district in the Northwest. The SOAR assesses attributions for success and failure in language arts and mathematics/science. Gender differences for the 165 girls and 160 boys did emerge. As the literature might suggest, girls had a more learned-helpless orientation in mathematics/science than did boys. In language arts, however, both were somewhat mastery oriented. Overall, both reflected a more adaptive pattern in language arts than in mathematics/science.
African American college students tend to obtain lower grades than their White counterparts, even when they enter college with equivalent test scores. Past research suggests that negative stereotypes impugning Black students' intellectual abilities play a role in this underperformance. Awareness of these stereotypes can psychologically threaten African Americans, a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” (Steele & Aronson, 1995), which can in turn provoke responses that impair both academic performance and psychological engagement with academics. An experiment was performed to test a method of helping students resist these responses to stereotype threat. Specifically, students in the experimental condition of the experiment were encouraged to see intelligence—the object of the stereotype—as a malleable rather than fixed capacity. This mind-set was predicted to make students' performances less vulnerable to stereotype threat and help them maintain their psychological engagement with academics, both of which could help boost their college grades. Results were consistent with predictions. The African American students (and, to some degree, the White students) encouraged to view intelligence as malleable reported greater enjoyment of the academic process, greater academic engagement, and obtained higher grade point averages than their counterparts in two control groups.
This study is concerned with the attribution of secondary students. Causal interpretations for academic success and failure were analysed to investigate the effect of gender, year level and achievement level on students’ academic attributions in Hong Kong, a Confucian Heritage Culture. The sample for the study comprised 14,846 students currently enrolled in Secondary 1 to Secondary 6 in Hong Kong. Multivariate analyses of variance found significant gender differences in ascriptions to ability, effort and strategy use reasons for school performance of students who shared a common cultural background. These effects remained after controlling for achievement and year levels. Chinese females in this sample were more inclined than Chinese males to explain their academic failure in terms of their lack of ability and strategy use. Females were also more likely to explain their academic success in terms of their effort or strategy use. Nevertheless, the study found secondary students of both genders and across all achievement and year levels, consistently ascribed to effort as the most important reason for academic outcomes. Secondary 4 students were significantly more inclined than students of lower levels to attribute their academic outcomes to effort and strategy use. Cultural influences are discussed in interpreting the findings.
The relation between 3- to 5-year-old children's beliefs about sociomoral stability (the tendency for antisocial behavior to remain stable over time) and their reasoning about peer interactions was examined. Participants were 100 preschoolers enrolled in a Head Start program. Children who endorsed sociomoral stability beliefs were less likely than their peers to make prosocial inferences, were rated by their teachers as less likely to engage in prosocial behavior, and were more likely to endorse the use of aggression to solve conflict with peers. These findings suggest that as early as preschool, children have general patterns of beliefs about the stability of antisocial behavior that predict a tendency to de-emphasize prosocial strategies that can mediate social challenges.
Social judgment and trait ascription have long been central issues in psychology. Two studies tested the hypothesis that children who believe that personality is a fixed quality (entity theorists) would make more rigid and long-term social judgments than those who believe that personality is malleable (incremental theorists). Fourth and fifth graders (mean age 10.2 years) viewed a slide show of a boy displaying negative behaviors (Study 1—being shy, clumsy, and nervous; Study 2—lying, cheating, and stealing) and then made a series of ratings. Half of the subjects saw a consistent (negative) ending, and half saw an inconsistent (more positive) ending. Even when they viewed positive counterevidence, entity theorists did not differ in their ratings of the focal traits, but incremental theorists did. Entity theorists in Study 2 also predicted significantly less change in the short term and the long term than did incremental theorists. Study 2 further revealed that, when the behaviors were more negative, entity theorists made more generalized and global negative trait evaluations of the target, showed less empathy, and recommended more punishment. Differences in the social judgment processes of entity and incremental theorists are discussed, and implications for issues (such as stereotyping) are explored.
The relation between the way in which children interpret human behavior and their beliefs about the stability of human traits is investigated. In interviews with 202 7- and 8-year-olds across 2 studies, the belief that traits are stable predicted a greater tendency to make trait judgments, and an increased focus on outcomes and behaviors through which traits can be judged. In the academic domain, a belief in trait stability was associated with an emphasis on the evaluative meanings of performance outcomes, as opposed to mediating processes such as effort. In the sociomoral domain, the same belief was associated with an emphasis on the evaluative meanings of behaviors (e.g., whether the person is good or bad), as opposed to factors that mediate behavior, such as intention. Results suggest that beliefs about the stability of traits may serve an important role in thinking about and functioning within the academic and sociomoral domains.
The role of gender in shaping achievement motivation has a long history in psychological and educational research. In this review, gender differences in motivation are examined using four contemporary theories of achievement motivation, including attribution, expectancy-value, self-efficacy, and achievement goal perspectives. Across all theories, findings indicate girls' and boys' motivation-related beliefs and behaviors continue to follow gender role stereotypes. Boys report stronger ability and interest beliefs in mathematics and science, whereas girls have more confidence and interest in language arts and writing. Gender effects are moderated by ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and classroom context. Additionally, developmental research indicates that gender differences in motivation are evident early in school, and increase for reading and language arts over the course of school. The role of the home and school environment in the development of these gender patterns is examined. Important implications for school professionals are highlighted.
Standardized tests continue to generate gender and race gaps in achievement despite decades of national attention. Research on “stereotype threat” (Steele & Aronson, 1995) suggests that these gaps may be partly due to stereotypes that impugn the math abilities of females and the intellectual abilities of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. A field experiment was performed to test methods of helping female, minority, and low-income adolescents overcome the anxiety-inducing effects of stereotype threat and, consequently, improve their standardized test scores. Specifically, seventh-grade students in the experimental conditions were mentored by college students who encouraged them either to view intelligence as malleable or to attribute academic difficulties in the seventh grade to the novelty of the educational setting. Results showed that females in both experimental conditions earned significantly higher math standardized test scores than females in the control condition. Similarly, the students—who were largely minority and low-income adolescents—in the experimental conditions earned significantly higher reading standardized test scores than students in the control condition.
