"This is hard!": Children and parents talk about difficulty during a dyadic interaction

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

Motivational frameworks correlate with academic achievement from elementary through high school (Park, Gunderson, Tsukayama, Levine & Beilock, 2016; Paunesku et al., 2015). Environmental influences such as parental praise influence children’s motivational frameworks even in early childhood (Gunderson et al., 2013). However, research on children’s pursuit of challenging goals based on motivational frameworks takes for granted that children can understand the relative difficulty of tasks. We investigated parents’ roles in shaping children’s concepts of difficulty, and what children understand about these concepts. We characterized first-grade children’s language that referenced how “easy” or “hard” tasks were (“difficulty-referencing language”) and examined parents’ responses to that language during a play session involving building materials as a first step towards addressing this issue.

Children completed a 15-minute video-taped session with their mother (n=104) and their father (n=76) at one site of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Dyads drew with an etch-a-sketch, built block designs, and played a card game. From these tapes, we coded (1) how frequently difficulty-referencing language occurred (2) whether it differed according to parent or child gender, (3) whether different tasks elicited different amounts of this language and (4) whether it related to other motivationally-relevant talk from parents (i.e., praise). We also coded whether statements referenced task ease, difficulty or were comparative, referred to a past/ongoing or future event, and who was referenced (Fig 1). The predominant kind of statement included no referent and was not feature-specific (e.g. “That’s hard!”).

We found that (1) parents and children spontaneously referenced difficulty frequently; 70% of fathers, 55% of mothers, 58% of children with their fathers, and 48% of children with their mothers produced at least one statement that referenced task difficulty. Given early-emerging gender differences in children’s spatial skills and parents’ engagement in spatial tasks (Ramirez, Gunderson, Levine & Beilock, 2012), we predicted that parents would be more likely to talk about how “hard” tasks were with girls, and mothers would produce more “hard” statements, reflecting their own spatial anxiety. Surprisingly, frequency of difficulty-referencing language did not vary by child or parent gender (2) but did vary by task (3) (Fig 2).

We hypothesized that parents’ use of difficulty language referencing a physical feature, action or rule of the task (ex. “It’s hard to turn the knobs at the same time”) might function like process praise because it draws attention to the process of task completion. (4) Mothers’, but not fathers’, use of feature-specific language was positively related to the frequency of their process praise (β(SE)=.28(.08), p< .001).

Although children and parents spontaneously talked about task difficulty, context may play a large role in whether or not and how much this language is elicited. Future experimental studies will explore (1) the effect adult difficulty-referencing statements –feature-specific, child-specific (i.e. “that was easy for you”), and general -- have on children’s goal choice, persistence, and strategy generation after failure, and (2) what task features elicit difficulty-referencing statements. Understanding the causes and consequences of difficulty-referencing language offers insight into motivational framework development.

Authors

• Grace Bennett-Pierre, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Marsha Weinraub, Temploe University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nora S Newcombe, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth A Gunderson, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author