Gender Differences in Cognitive Control and Student Persistence: A Neurophysiological Investigation

• In Event: 2-182 - Gender Differences in Psychophysiological Measures of Emotion Reactivity and Self-Regulated Behaviors

Integrative Statement

Research suggests cognitive and emotion regulation skills are critical for early academic success (Blair & Razza, 2007), yet less is known about their relation to other factors of student performance, such as persistence. Persistence is thought to be important for a child’s overall approach to learning (LiGrinning, et al., 2010) and has been linked to better academic performance both at school entrance and across schooling (Newman, et al., 1998; Josza & Morgan, 2013). Defined as the ability to continually expend effort despite difficulty (Berhenke, et al., 2011), persistence requires students to regulate their behaviors and emotions to meet task demands. Consequently, response monitoring, a cognitive control skill involving a child’s attention to their performance (Overbeek, et al., 2005), may be related to persistence. In addition, gender differences have been found for motivational aspects related to persistence (Ryan & Deci, 2000; Watt, 2007). Specifically, girls are taught to value effort and report more social relatedness to their teachers (Deci & Ryan, 1980) and therefore may demonstrate persistence because of a desire to meet social expectations.
The current study utilized measures of brain and behavior to examine the gender effects on the relation between cognitive control and task persistence. 84 K-2nd graders (33 boys) completed a child-friendly Go/No-Go task requiring cognitive control. Response monitoring ERPs associated with academic and self-regulatory skills (Grammer, et al., 2014) were also extracted, to assess associations between neural indices of cognitive control and student persistence. A challenging puzzle task (Kim, et al., 2017) was utilized to assess persistence, measured as time attempting to build the most difficult puzzle. Persistence was then categorized into high/low categories, in order to examine associations with response monitoring skills.
A significant main effect of persistence was found for accuracy on the Go/No-Go task (F(1,69)=18.897, p=.025, np2=.869) such that high-persistent children demonstrated more accurate performance than low-persistent children. However, persistence × gender interactions were found for ERP correlates of response monitoring (ERN: F(1,42)=3.907, p=.055, np2=.085; Pe: F(1,42)=3.133, p=.084, np2=.069). Specifically, boys who showed high persistence on the puzzle task had enhanced ERN (F(1,17)=5.504, p=.034, np2=.282) and Pe (F(1,17)=3.344, p=.089, np2=.193) mean amplitudes compared to low persistent boys.
Findings suggest that an aspect of cognitive control, response monitoring, is related to persistent behavior. However, this relation may be moderated by gender, such that increased response monitoring, indexed at the neural level, was associated with boys’ persistence but not girls’. Gender differences in ERP data highlight the value of considering neural measures for providing additional information critical to understanding influences on broad skills such as persistence.

Authors

• Sarah Jo Torgrimson, University of California Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Patricia Tan, UCLA, Semel Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennie Grammer, UCLA
  Non-Presenting Author