Changes in Using Dimensional Comparisons to Form Ability Self-Concepts Across Development

• In Event: STEM: Cognition, Motivations, and Interventions

Abstract

When students make self-evaluations, they may not only use information from interindividual comparisons with others (i.e., social comparison), but also use information from intraindividual comparisons across domains such as math and language arts (i.e., dimensional comparison). Developmental psychologists have suggested that the extent to which children and adolescents rely on different comparisons may differ over time due to cognitive development and developmental changes in the nature of their educational environments (Cimpian, 2017; Dweck, 2002; Harter, 2012; Higgins & Parsons, 1983; Nicholls, 1978; Stipek & Mac Iver, 1989). Evidence from existing meta-analytic reviews indicates that the involvement of dimensional comparisons in ability self-concepts formation may increase over age (Möller et al., 2009, 2020). However, there is a lack of empirical work on investigating the mechanisms underlying the age-related change in dimensional comparisons.
The current study examined two explanations of the increased role of dimensional comparisons in formation of students’ ability self-concepts. First, students are not capable of making dimensional comparisons in their early school years and this ability improves as they grow older. Second, students are able to make dimensional comparisons but their ability self-concepts are more driven by social comparisons in the early school years, and they shift to rely more on dimensional comparisons over time. We examined the following research questions:
1) Would students be able to make dimensional comparisons and use dimensional comparisons in the formation of ability self-concepts across age?
2) Does such ability increase over age?
3) Does students’ reliance on dimensional comparisons in the formation of ability self-concepts increase over age?
We analyzed data from the Childhood and Beyond (CAB) study, an existing multi-cohort longitudinal study of the development and socialization of children’s achievement motivation and behavior. We used data from Waves 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 in this study. Thus, Cohort 1 has data from Grades 1, 2, 3, 7, and 9, Cohort 2 has data from Grades 2, 3, 4, 8, and 10, and Cohort 3 has data from Grades 4, 5, 6, 10, and 12. Measurements are math and language ability self-concept survey items. Those items used different instruction to ask students to use different comparison processes to describe their self-perception of their own math and language abilities. They were divided into three categories: external (i.e., based on social comparisons), internal (i.e., based on dimensional comparisons), and non-comparative.
We found that the correlations between internal math and language ability self-concepts were positive or near-zero in the early school years, suggesting that students were unable to make dimensional comparisons or use dimensional comparisons to form ability self-concepts before grade 3. We saw a decline in those correlations, suggesting the ability increased over age (see Figure 1). Regression analysis showed that both internal and external ability self-concepts predicted non-comparative ability self-concepts independently across time, but the variations explained by the external ones stop increasing after grade 4, while the variations explained by the internal ones kept increasing during the school years (see Figure 2). Our results provide evidence for both of the explanations.

Authors

• Sirui Wan, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Fani Lauermann, Technische Universität Dortmund
  Non-Presenting Author

• Drew Bailey, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jacquelynne S. Eccles, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author