Too Much of a Good Thing: Temporal Alignment is Critical to the Efficacy of Caregiver Process Praise

• In Event: The Influence of Caregiver Talk on Young Children's Persistence

Abstract

Persisting can be aversive because of the opportunity costs and frustrations involved; thus, to facilitate children’s persistence, adults must help children build positive associations with effort. While the effectiveness of caregivers’ process praise in facilitating persistence has been illustrated across age groups (e.g., Lucca et al., 2019), the timing of process praise has been understudied. Temporal alignment of process praise at key points of goal achievement may be important: receiving praise after overcoming a challenge will likely feel motivating but receiving praise after failure may feel confusing. Indeed, in school-aged children, the perceived accuracy (Brummelman et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2016) and timing (Brummelman, 2020) of praise does influence its interpretation. Thus, we sought to understand whether praise linking trying to success may facilitate persistence, as well as to explore the effects of misaligned praise.

In Experiment 1, archival coding was performed on data from 18-month-olds (N = 29, mean = 18.50 months, range: 17.56–19.30; 11 females; 83% White) who completed a 10-minute dyadic, semi-naturalistic “gear stacking task.” Dyads played as they would at home, and caregiver process praise was categorized based on its timing: Trying Only (i.e., praise only when the infant was trying), Success Only (i.e., praise only during the child’s success), Both (i.e., praise during trying and success), or Random (i.e., praise with no overlap with trying or success). In addition, infants’ gear stacking rate (average gears stacked per minute) was coded to quantify persistence. Results indicated that infants who received more Both utterances stacked more gears controlling for the effects of all other praise types (β = 0.54, p = .01), and the overall amount of process praise given (β = 0.42, p = .02). However, praise offered during other overlap periods did not predict persistence (all p’s > .46), suggesting that process praise which linked trying and success uniquely encouraged infants’ persistence.

In Experiment 2, we extended the ecological validity of these findings by testing participants in their own homes, sampling for greater racial diversity and age range (N = 60; mean = 22.57 months; range: 16.77-31.42; 31 females; 40% White). Again, the data revealed a significant effect of Both, controlling for the effects of all other praise types (β = 0.94, p = .002) and infants’ overall process praise (β = 1.01, p < .001). Interestingly, we found a (negative) effect of Random praise: infants who received more Random praise stacked fewer gears (β = -0.75, p = .03). Likewise, simply receiving more process praise overall did not increase persistence, as overall process praise negatively predicted persistence when controlling for Both utterances (β = -0.72, p = .001). Thus, while work has indicated that older children consider praise accuracy and quality, this work suggests toddlers are also affected by the quality of praise they receive in toddlerhood. This is true both in the sense that well-timed praise, which links children’s effort and success, was uniquely associated with greater persistence, but also in the sense that praise offered indiscriminately actually negatively influences persistence.

Authors

• Tim Wei-Ting Chao, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto

• Antonia K Soldovieri, University of Toronto

• Shraddha Bhatt, University of Toronto

• Irem Ciraci, University of Toronto

• Jessica A Sommerville, University of Toronto