Parent praise to 1- to 3-year-olds predicts children's motivational frameworks 5 years later - PubMed (original) (raw)

Observational Study

. 2013 Sep-Oct;84(5):1526-41.

doi: 10.1111/cdev.12064. Epub 2013 Feb 11.

Affiliations

Observational Study

Parent praise to 1- to 3-year-olds predicts children's motivational frameworks 5 years later

Elizabeth A Gunderson et al. Child Dev. 2013 Sep-Oct.

Abstract

In laboratory studies, praising children's effort encourages them to adopt incremental motivational frameworks--they believe ability is malleable, attribute success to hard work, enjoy challenges, and generate strategies for improvement. In contrast, praising children's inherent abilities encourages them to adopt fixed-ability frameworks. Does the praise parents spontaneously give children at home show the same effects? Although parents' early praise of inherent characteristics was not associated with children's later fixed-ability frameworks, parents' praise of children's effort at 14-38 months (N = 53) did predict incremental frameworks at 7-8 years, suggesting that causal mechanisms identified in experimental work may be operating in home environments.

© 2013 The Authors. Child Development © 2013 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Parent Person and Process Praise by Child Age. Change over time in amount of parents’ process and person praise, as a percent of total praise.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Percent of Parent Praise of Each Type, by Child Gender.

Figure 3

Figure 3

Parent Process Praise and Children’s Motivational Framework Score. Children’s motivational framework score, plotted at +/− 1 standard deviation from the mean of parents’ process praise (Model 1). Positive scores indicate a more incremental framework.

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