Seeking information or affirmation: Young children’s decisions about whom to approach for praise

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Praise is ubiquitous in young children’s lives––how do children learn from and seek out praise? Much work has focused on children’s sensitivity to the content of praise (e.g., ability vs. effort praise; Mueller & Dweck, 1998), yet even the exact same piece of feedback (“Great talk!”) can have different meanings depending on who provides it; praise from someone who selectively praises higher-quality work is more informative than from someone who praises irrespective of quality. Indeed, recent work has suggested that just as children evaluate others’ testimony about the world (Sobel & Kushnir, 2013), children can also evaluate the informativeness of others’ feedback about the self (Asaba et al., 2018).

Yet there are still open questions about whether children would actually seek out (or recommend to others) more informative praise. Critically, this may depend on the learner’s goals––do they want to improve at the task or feel good about themselves? Here we test whether young children understand whose feedback (Selective or Overpraise Teacher) a learner should approach depending on the learner’s goal.

In our ongoing, pre-registered study (4- and 5-year-olds, Current N=16, Target N=80) study, participants watch videos of teachers providing praise to another student: a Selective Teacher, who praises (e.g., “This is a great tracing!”) only higher-quality work, and an Overpraise Teacher, who indiscriminately praises everything; note that both teachers praise only the quality of the work, not the students’ ability or effort. Then, participants meet learners who made tracings and need help figuring out which teacher to ask for feedback. Critically, we manipulate the learner’s goals (Improve trial: “Anne wants to get better at tracing”; Happy trial: “Sally wants to feel happy”). All participants see both trials and respond by choosing one teacher for the learner to approach.

Our key prediction is that children will be more likely to choose the Selective Teacher when the learner wants to improve at tracing than when the learner wants to feel happy. So far, the data are consistent with this prediction: 50% have chosen the Selective Teacher for the Improve trial, whereas only 18.75% have chosen the Selective Teacher for the Happy trial. All data will be collected over Zoom; the study will be feasible to be completed by the conference data. See blinded pre-registration here: https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=s456ag.

This study will provide insight into the cognitive capacities that underlie children’s decisions and learning in real-world learning environments: who children approach for feedback on their work. So far, our findings suggest that children are not simply passive recipients of others’ feedback. Rather, they are an active and important part of this process, strategically curating what and whose feedback they receive.

Authors

• Jessa R Stegall, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Mika Asaba, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hyowon Gweon, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael C. Frank, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author