The Influence of Timing in Praise and Persistence during Challenging Tasks

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Interactions between children and their caregivers are widely understood to be crucial for development, imparting both skills as well as underlying values. Persistence in the face of difficulty is important for cognitive skills and for lifelong outcomes (Banerjee & Tamis-LeMonda. 2007; Ekreis-Winkler et al., 2014). However, humans have a paradoxical relationship with effort exertion, often viewing effort as aversive and expecting others to minimize effort, but also sometimes seeking out challenge for enjoyment (Inzlicht et al., 2018). Therefore, for children to persist through difficulty, they must build a positive association with effort. Caregivers’ effort-related language is important in this process, and the benefits of process praise (i.e., praise for effort itself) relative to person praise (i.e., praise for stable traits) have been illustrated across age groups in previous work.
However, the timing of process praise may also be important. In particular, praise given during success may be understood as a job well done, communicating the value of effort for success. In contrast, praise occurring during trying may reinforce the inherent value of effort. To investigate how differences in the timing of process praise relate to effort, behavioral coding was performed using previously collected data (Lucca et al., 2019). Twenty-nine typically developing 18-month olds (mean age = 18;15 months, range = 17;21–19;9, 11 female) completed several tasks, including an independent “tube task,” and a semi-naturalistic dyadic “gear stacking task” with their caregivers (Figure 1). Parental utterances during the gear stack task were coded to identify process praise, and child behavior was coded to identify times when children were either 1) trying to place gears, or 2) succeeding at placing gears. This coding was then aligned to indicate whether process praise coincided with trying (i.e., moments of effort exertion) or gear stacking (i.e., moments of success).
Preliminary data from 15 infants indicate that process praise occurred at similar rates during infant trying (M = 0.69 utterances per minute) and task success (M = 1.08 utterances per minute; p > .44), and a similar number of parents used process praise during infant trying (M = 47%) and task success (M=40%, p > .72). The presence of parental process praise during moments of effort exertion did not predict persistence on the gear stacking task (p > .83). However, the presence of parental process during moments of success did predict persistence on the gear stacking task (beta = 9.78 seconds, t(13) = 2.19, p = .05), as well as predicting persistence on the independent tube task that infants completed prior to receiving parental coaching (beta = 24.56, t(13)=2.80, p < .02). Therefore, while parents are apt to offer process praise during both moments of effort exertion and moments of success, only process praise offered during moments of success is related to children’s persistence behaviors.
Next steps of this work will include processing the remainder of the twenty-nine-participant sample. Further, we plan to launch a semi-naturalistic, in-home follow-up experiment in order to explore the causal pathways established by these correlational analyses.

Authors

• Antonia K Soldovieri, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Josanne Buchanan, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachel Horton, University Of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kelsey Lucca, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica A Sommerville, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author