Poster #38 - SES differences in children’s mindset behaviors and related self-beliefs

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

A widening achievement gap between low and high SES students has been a concern the past decades, and the gap exists in children as early as five years old (Reardon, 2013). Having a growth mindset may act as a buffer against the trends of an income-achievement gap (Claro, Paunesku, & Dweck, 2016; Sisk et al., 2018) and arguably starts to influence achievement at a very young age. To date, mindset measures created for young children (Smiley & Dweck, 1994) have been behavior-based, measuring task persistence and challenge-seeking, but do not directly probe explicit self-beliefs. Here we take a preliminary step towards linking SES, mindset behaviors, and related self-beliefs that emerge in early and middle childhood.
We recruited 5- to 8- year-olds (M= 7.08; SD=0.94; 5.04-8.94) from two nearby communities in and around a rural area: one predominantly high SES (N=29; 82% income >$100,000; 94% with a Graduate/Professional Degree) and one predominantly low SES (N=14; 37% income between $20,000 and $50,000; 31% income between $50,000 and $100,000; 64% with a College Diploma). Data collection is ongoing so results are preliminary.
Children participated in three tasks in the following order:
1) Free will beliefs: following Kushnir et al. (2015), children were asked whether they could choose freely to act against or inhibit their own strong desires.
2) Mindset behaviors: following Smiley & Dweck (1994), children completed a series of difficult and easy puzzles, and were asked to choose which puzzle they would do again and why.
3) Future change: Children were asked about their own preferences (“something you like/dislike”) and abilities (“something that is hard/easy to do”), then were asked whether they thought these change or stay the same at two future time points: a year from now, and “when you grow up.”
The results showed marked differences between the high-SES and low-SES children in free will beliefs and in mindset. Children from low SES (M=1.07, SE=0.40) believed they had less freedom to act against strong desires compared to children from high SES (M=2.46, SE=0.27), t(40)=2.94, p=.005. Children from low SES were significantly more likely to show fixed mindset behaviors than children from high SES (85% fixed vs 52% fixed, respectively; χ2 (2, N=43)=2.85, p=.092).
We found no SES differences in beliefs about future change. One-sample t-tests comparing the proportion of “same” responses to chance (50%) showed that children of both SES groups thought “likes” and “easy” things would not change (liked: t(42)=11.93, p<.001; easy: t(41)=11.85, p<.001), and dislikes may or may not change (t(41)=1.12, ns). Though in general children who thought that things that were “hard” would get easier (t(41)=-2.18, p<.05) those with low free will beliefs were significantly likely to believe that a currently hard academic subject will remain so (r=0.345, p<.05).
Though preliminary, the results suggest that SES mediates links between behaviors and beliefs related to achievement motivation in early elementary school. Further research on the causal mechanisms underlying this link is needed to understand whether fostering positive self-beliefs contributes to early academic success.

Authors

• Rebecca Li, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Tamar Kushnir, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author