Poster #201 - Infants’ persistence is shaped by linguistic input

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Persistence is a key predictor of successful life outcomes: the harder you try, the further you get (Duckworth et al., 2007). Individual differences in persistence emerge during infancy, and endure throughout childhood and into adulthood (Yarrow et al., 1984). Despite the importance of early persistence for later development, the factors that shape persistence during infancy, as individual differences are first emerging, are poorly understood – making it difficult to design interventions to promote persistence early in life, when it is most malleable and therefore most impactful. One factor that may contribute to the development of early persistence is the type of language caregivers use when infants engage in effortful activities (Gunderson et al., 2018). Here, we tested this question by examining how infants’ persistence is shaped by the ways in which their parents praise their effortful behaviors and talk about persistence more broadly.
Twenty-nine 18-month-olds (M = 18.52, SD = .51) were tested in a two-part observational study. First, in a joint book reading task, the experimenter gave parent-infant dyads a wordless picture book depicting a baby trying to walk, and were instructed to read the book just as they would at home (see Figure 1). Then, dyads were given a toy task (a difficult to solve gear stacker, Figure 1), and instructed to play just as they would at home.
We coded infant persistence by measuring the number of gears they stacked onto the gear base during free play. We coded parental language by transcribing parental talk during the book and toy task into utterances, and then coded each utterance into one of three categories of praise: generic (e.g. “yay!”), process-oriented (e.g. “great work!”), or person-oriented (e.g. “you’re so smart!”). To assess parental value of persistence, we also coded the extent to which parents talked about persistence by transcribing each utterance as either persistence focused (e.g., “see the baby trying so hard!”) or non-persistence focused (e.g., “see the baby’s blue shoes!”).
Results revealed that the frequency of parental praise predicted infants’ persistence (r = .45, p = .01), infants who heard more praise persisted for longer than infants who heard less praise. Critically, however, all praise did not predict persistence equally: there was a significant correlation between process-oriented praise and persistence (r = .51, p = .005), but not between person-oriented praise and persistence (r = -.04, p = .85). Broader parental values surrounding persistence, as reflected in parental use of persistence-focused language also appears to be an important contributor to persistence: there was a significant correlation between parental talk about persistence and their infants’ own persistence (r = .34, p = .07). See Figure 2.
In sum, these findings demonstrate that the type of language parents use when helping their children solve a difficult problem is related to infants’ persistence. These findings provide important insight, at a mechanistic level, into the effects of parental language on persistence, and the lay the foundation for developing targeted interventions aimed at enhancing persistence as individual differences are first emerging during infancy.

Authors

• Kelsey Lucca, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Horton, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karina Ventura, California State University, San Bernardino
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jerry Bi, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lisa Chiang, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Wyatt Anderson, Sewanee
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pan Gu, Colorado College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica Sommerville, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author