Is no praise good praise? Effects of positive feedback on children's and university students’ responses to subsequent failures

Background. According to Dweck and colleagues, praise can be delivered using person (‘you are clever') or process terms (‘you worked hard'). Research suggests that giving people process praise after success can help them deal better with subsequent failures because it attributes outcomes to effort rather than fixed ability. However, research has thus far inadequately addressed how these types of praise compare to receiving no evaluative feedback. Aim. The aim of the present research was to examine the effects of person and process praise compared to a control group where only objective outcome feedback was given. Samples. In Study 1, 145 British school children aged 9–11 years took part. In Study 2, participants were 114 British university students. Method. In both studies, participants read three scenarios and were asked to imagine themselves as the main character. In each scenario, they succeeded in an educational task and received either person, process, or no praise. Participants then read two scenarios, where they failed at a task. Following each scenario participants evaluated their performance, affect, and persistence. Results. After one failure, participants who received person praise reacted most negatively on all dependent measures. However, those in the process condition did not differ significantly from those in the control group. Conclusions. These findings suggest that process feedback may not be inherently positive; instead person feedback seems particularly detrimental.     

批评/表扬与儿童反应模式的关系

该文在介绍了成人实施的批评与表扬的基本类型基础上,着重分析并阐述了成人的批评/表扬与儿童儿童反应模式之间关系的最新研究成果,即个人取向的批评/表扬导致儿童的无助反应模式而过程取向的批评/表扬引发儿童掌握取向的反应模式。然后,进一步从儿童社会认知的角度分析说明了批评/表扬与儿童反应模式之间关系的内在心理机制。不同类型的批评/表扬导致儿童持有不同的能力理论,引发儿童追求不同的成就目标,改变儿童对任务成绩的归因等,进而使儿童表现出不同的反应模式。最后,作者指出了该领域尚待进一步探讨的问题     

Understanding of literal truth, ironic criticism, and deceptive praise following childhood head injury.

Children with closed head injury (CHI) have semantic-pragmatic language problems that include difficulty in understanding and producing both literal and nonliteral statements. For example, they are relatively insensitive to some of the social messages in nonstandard communication as well as to words that code distinctions among mental states. This suggests that they may have difficulty with comprehension tasks involving first- and second-order intentionality, such as those involved in understanding irony and deception. We studied how 6- to 15-year-old children, typically developing or with CHI, interpret scenarios involving literal truth, ironic criticism, and deceptive praise. Children with severe CHI had overall poorer mastery of the task. Even mild CHI impaired the ability to understand the intentionality underlying deceptive praise. CHI, especially biologically significant CHI, appears to place children at risk for failure to understand language as externalized thought.     

The Effects of Social-Comparison Versus Mastery Praise on Children’s Intrinsic Motivation

Two studies examined the effects of social-comparison versus mastery praise on 4th- and 5th-grade children’s intrinsic motivation. Children received a high score and either social-comparison praise, mastery praise, or no praise for working on a set of novel puzzles. They then worked on a different task and were given either ambiguous feedback (Study 1) or positive feedback (Study 2) before completing measures of intrinsic motivation. Mastery praise enhanced intrinsic motivation and social-comparison praise curtailed it when uncertainty about children’s subsequent performance was introduced (Study 1) and, for girls, even in situations of continued success (Study 2). Social-comparison praise also tended to discourage children from seeking subsequent self-evaluative normative information. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Traces of the artist: Sensitivity to the role of the artist in children's pictorial reasoning

In three studies we investigated the question of whether children consider the attributes of the artist (sentience, age level, affective style, emotion) when making judgments about the traces (drawings) made by that artist. In Study 1, 2–5‐year‐old children were asked to find pictures drawn by a machine, an adult, an older and a younger child. Results indicated that children younger than 4 years do not consider the artists' attributes when making judgments, but 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds do. Furthermore, whereas the oldest children were adept at both machine‐person (sentience) and person‐person (age) contrasts, 4‐year‐olds succeeded only with person‐person contrasts. In Study 2, videotaped artists displayed differences in degree of agitation (affective style) while drawing, and this attribute was manipulated in the drawing by varying line density, asymmetry, line overlap and line gap, or all four features, across stimuli. Three‐ and five‐year‐old children judged whether a calm or agitated person drew the stimuli. Findings showed that five‐year‐old, but not 3‐year‐old, children easily completed the task. In Study 3, 3‐, 5‐ and 7‐year‐old children judged whether happy or sad artists made paintings of matching emotional tone. Performance on this picture judgment task was contrasted with performance on three theory of mind tasks (false belief, emotion and interpretative). The results indicated that 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds successfully judged the impact of artists' emotions on paintings, but 3‐year‐olds did not. Performance on the picture task was related to that on the false belief task, but not to the emotion or interpretive tasks. Taken together, the results suggest that children's view of visual symbols includes a consideration of the qualities of the artist beginning around 5 years, and there appears to be a common link between judgments of the mind behind the visual symbol in the picture task and judgments of mental state reasoning in the false belief task.     

Effects of performance expectancies created by peer comparison as related to social reinforcement,task difficulty,and age of child

Children in kindergarten-first grades and fourth-sixth grades (6 and 10 years of age, respectively) participated in one of two experiments and performed either a simple motor task or (for older children only) a two-choice simultaneous discrimination task at two difficulty levels. Children received either positive, negative, or no peer comparison statements (describing how other children their age had allegedly performed) and either praise, silence (in Experiment 2 only), or criticism on a fixed-interval 20-second schedule throughout the task. Young children were more responsive to adult evaluation of their performance than to peer comparison. Expectancies created by peer comparisons affected older children's motor performance most if they received reinforcement contrary to the expectancy. In situations requiring greater cognitive ability, older children, particularly boys, responded to the performance expectancies created by positive peer comparison. Older boys, compared with older girls, seemed to be more sensitive to peer comparison and social reinforcement.     

不同归因取向的表扬对儿童失败后的影响效应

以103名小学五年级的儿童为被试,考察不同归因取向的表扬对儿童遭遇失败后的影响效应。结果发现：（1）接受能力取向表扬的儿童在遭遇失败后表现出无助取向的反应模式,接受努力取向表扬的儿童表现出掌握取向的反应模式;（2）接受能力取向表扬的儿童倾向于采取防御性的失败归因策略,将失败更多地归因于测试焦虑,但其对能力因素的归因仍高于努力组和控制组,接受努力取向表扬的儿童更多地将失败归因于努力因素;（3）接受能力取向表扬的儿童表现出自我设限倾向,他们报告更多的测试焦虑,并缩短后测的做题时间和更低的后测成绩。     

Effects of positive and negative adult-child interactions on children's task performance and task preferences

In individual sessions, an adult directed three boys to work on each of three different tasks. Within a given session the on-task behavior for one task was praised, the off-task behavior for another task was verbally reprimanded, and all behavior was ignored with the third task. Using a multielement baseline design, the manner in which the adult interacted with the children on a given task varied from day to day. Across 18 sessions, verbal reprimands produced the highest task rates, with praise producing only a slightly higher rate of responding than noninteraction. After each session the children were given the choice of which of the three tasks they wished to work on when the adult left the room for a few minutes. Tasks associated with verbal reprimands of off-task behavior were never chosen. The first and second choices were always the task associated with praise for on-task behavior or the task where the children were ignored. These preferences generalized to similar tasks.     

Motivation and Self‐Control: Implicit Motives Moderate the Exertion of Self‐Control in Motive‐Related Tasks

Using a dual‐task paradigm, two experiments tested whether aroused implicit motives would moderate the exertion of self‐control in motive‐related tasks. In Study 1, 67 participants first watched a power dialogue and were then asked to either enact the dialogue or simply reproduce it by writing it down. In Study 2, 74 participants performed either the frustrating or the simple version of an achievement‐related sensorimotor task. Participants who were high (compared to low) on the implicit power motive and had exerted power over another person subsequently showed more success at controlling their emotional responses (Study 1). Participants who were high (compared to low) on the implicit achievement motive and who had mastered a frustrating sensorimotor task scored better on a subsequent Stroop task (Study 2). Participants in the control conditions did not differ in self‐control performance regardless of their level of implicit motives. These studies provide evidence that aroused implicit motives regulate how much self‐control is exerted when performing motive‐related tasks that require self‐control.     

Paradoxical effects of praise and criticism: Social,dimensional and temporal comparisons

Background. When developing a domain‐specific academic self‐concept, students are not restricted to social comparisons; they may also make temporal or dimensional comparisons. Aims. The main purpose of this study was to examine whether these different types of comparison trigger paradoxical effects of praise and criticism in the sense described by Meyer (1992) . University students participated in Study 1 (N=120) and Study 4 (N=83). The Study 2 sample consisted of 180 seventh to ninth grade students, and Study 3 investigated paradoxical effects with a sample of 130 elementary school students. Methods. Participants were presented with vignettes describing the results of 2 students (social comparison condition) versus 1 student in 2 subjects (dimensional comparison) versus 1 student in 2 subsequent tests (temporal comparison). In all cases, the results were identical. Participants were then informed about a teacher's response to these results (praise vs. criticism vs. neutral response), and were asked to estimate the ability of the 2 stimulus persons. Results. Study 1 and Study 2 revealed that dimensional, as well as social, comparisons following praise and criticism elicit paradoxical effects of perceived ability, reflected in corresponding estimations of student effort and teacher expectancies. There were no paradoxical effects following temporal comparisons. Study 3 did not reveal any paradoxical effects, thereby supporting the assumption that the occurrence of such effects depends on the level of cognitive development. Study 4 showed that the paradoxical effects found in Study 1 and 2 occur even when the sanctioned and the neutral achievement are presented independently. Conclusions. Dimensional comparisons, which have been largely overlooked in the past, play a major role in ability inferences.     

Praising child compliance: Reinforcement or ritual?

Praising child compliance is a common therapeutic recommendation to parents with noncompliant children. There are currently no studies documenting the independent contribution of the praise component to successful parent training programs. Three projects were designed to evaluate the hypotheses underlying the use of contingent praise routines. Namely, it has been suggested that conduct-disordered children are relatively unresponsive to adult approval at pretreatment, yet become responsive by posttreatment. In contrast to the hypotheses, data indicated that child compliance levels were not associated with child responsivity to maternal social reinforces; noncompliant children were responsive to maternal praise both before and after treatment; child responsivity to maternal praise did not covary with successful treatment; previously noncompliant but successfully treated children continued to comply to maternal instructions after contingent praise was withdrawn; a nonclinic child demonstrated extensive compliance persistence in the absence of contingent praise. Praising child compliance appeared to be more of a polite ritual than an active therapeutic component for altering noncompliance.The author is grateful to the many students who have participated in these projects. Special thanks go to Lynn McIsaac, Lisa Grange, and Dan Anderson for their assistance with Project 3.     

Correspondence between saying and doing: teaching children to share and praise

Five small groups of preschool children were taught to share and praise by the modelling of these behaviors and reinforcement of their reports of sharing and praising. Experiment I demonstrated that modelling and reinforcement of any (true or untrue) reports of sharing, and then of praising, promptly increased reports of the corresponding behaviors. Modelling and reinforcement for true reports of each behavior increased both reporting and actual behavior. Experiment II showed that both reported and actual sharing and praising may be increased by modelling and reinforcement for true reports of the target behavior, without previous reinforcement for any (true or untrue) reports of those behaviors. Sharing, but not praising, generalized to a second setting. Experiment III replicated the results of Experiment II for sharing and praising, and demonstrated similar success in increasing a third behavior, specific praising. In general, these experiments show that developing correspondence between children's reports of behavior and actual behavior may be an efficient means of increasing prosocial responses.     

Working memory abilities and children's performance in laboratory analogues of classroom activities

Laboratory analogues of classroom activities on which children with low working memory skills have been observed to perform very poorly were developed and employed in two studies. In Study 1, 5‐ and 6‐year‐old completed one task involving recalling spoken sentences and counting the numbers of words, and another task involving the identification of rhyming words in spoken poems. Poorer performance of low than average working memory children was obtained on the recall measure of both tasks. In Study 2, 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children heard spoken instructions involving the manipulation of a sequence of objects, and were asked either to perform the instructions or repeat them, in different conditions. The accuracy of performing but not repeating instructions was strongly associated with working memory skills. These results indicate that working memory plays a significant role in typical classroom activities that involve both the storage and mental manipulation of information. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of causal belief for prior success or failure on preferences to delay gratification in task contingent versus task noncontingent conditions1

This study investigated how causal belief for prior success or failure affected preferences to delay gratifications in task contingent versus task noncontingent conditions. Success or failure on the Treatment Task and belief about the outcome were experimentally induced to lead fourth-and fifth-grade pupils to perceive task performance as resulting from one of four factors (Ability, Task Difficulty, Effort, or Luck). Thereafter, each subject chose between smaller, noncontingent rewards and delayed, larger rewards that were contingent on waiting only or on successful performance on tasks which varied in similarity to the initial task. As predicted, preferences to delay were not differentially affected by success or failure when subjects believed unstable factors of effort or luck caused the outcome. However, delay was affected by prior success or failure when the belief was that the outcome resulted from stable factors of ability or task difficulty, with subjects delaying more after success than following failure. Furthermore, the outcome predicted delay on tasks identical or similar to the Treatment Task whereas belief about causality predicted delay on the Different Task. Delay was greater by subjects with ability or effort inductions than by subjects with a luck induction.     

Effects of objective feedback and "single other" or "average other" social comparison feedback on performance judgments and helping behavior

In two studies, participants received positive or negative feedback about their performance on a verbal task and then provided hints to another person on a subsequent, different task. It was expected that participants would give more helpful hints after positive than after negative feedback but that this would be more apparent when the feedback was based on performance comparisons with the "average participant" than on comparisons with another person or an objective standard. This effect was expected to be mediated by judgments of one's performance on the first task. These predictions were supported. Participants seemed aware of the effect of feedback on their hint choices, and their hint choices did not alter their affect levels. Also, participants receiving comparative (single or aggregated target) feedback exhibited changes in self-ascribed importance of the performance domain. Implications for social comparison theory and self-evaluation maintenance theory are discussed.     

Interference control in children with reading difficulties

Two studies investigated whether the greater Stroop interference reported in children with reading difficulties compared to typical readers of the same age represents a generalized deficit in interference control or a consequence of their reading problems. In Study 1, a color-word Stroop task and a nonverbal task involving responses to locations associated with pictures were administered to 23 children with single word reading difficulties and 22 typically developing children matched for age and nonverbal ability. Children with reading difficulties showed disproportionate interference effects in the color-word Stroop but not the nonverbal task. In Study 2, groups of poor and typical readers completed a spatial Stroop task with printed input that did not require a verbal response and a nonverbal analogue. Both groups showed comparable interference in these two tasks. Thus, the reported problems in the color-word Stroop task in children with reading difficulties do not appear to entail general impairments in interference control.     

Emotion,Decision, and Risk: Betting on Gambles versus Betting on People

We examined the effects of two emotions, fear and anger, on risk‐taking behavior in two types of tasks: Those in which uncertainty is generated by a randomizing device (“lottery risk”) and those in which it is generated by the uncertain behavior of another person (“person‐based risk”). Participants first completed a writing task to induce fear or anger. They then made choices either between lotteries (Experiment 1) or between actions in risky two‐person decisions (Experiments 2 and 3). The experiments involved substantial real‐money payoffs. Replicating earlier studies (which used hypothetical rewards), Experiment 1 showed that fearful participants were more risk‐averse than angry participants in lottery‐risk tasks. However—the key result of this study—fearful participants were substantially less risk‐averse than angry participants in a two‐person task involving person‐based risk (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 offered options and payoffs identical to those of Experiment 2 but with lottery‐type risk. Risk‐taking returned to the pattern of Experiment 1. The impact of incidental emotions on risk‐taking appears to be contingent on the class of uncertainty involved. For lottery risk, fear increased the frequency of risk‐averse choices and anger reduced it. The reverse pattern was found when uncertainty in the decision was person‐based. Further, the effect was specifically on differences in willingness to take risks rather than on differences in judgments of how much risk was present. The impact of different emotions on risk‐taking or risk‐avoiding behavior is thus contingent on the type, as well as the degree, of uncertainty the decision maker faces. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sensitivity to criticism and theory of mind: A cross cultural study on Japanese and Italian children

Although recent studies have shown cross-cultural differences in theory of mind (ToM) between children in Western and Eastern cultures, little is known about cross-cultural differences pertaining to social correlates. The present research investigated cultural variations in the relationship between sensitivity to criticism and ToM. Japanese (n = 76) and Italian (n = 76) 6-year-olds completed a sensitivity-to-criticism task (either the teacher condition or the peer condition), second-order false-belief tasks, and a verbal ability test. The results replicated previous findings of an association between ability rating after teacher criticism and ToM in both countries. Cultural variation was found in emotional response and motivation after teacher, but nor peer, criticism. Japanese children responded to teacher criticism more positively than did Italian children. Moreover, Japanese children who failed the second-order false-belief task were more motivated after teacher criticism than were Italian children. These results are discussed in relation to differences in cultural factors.     

Incremental effects of reward on creativity

The authors examined 2 ways reward might increase creativity. First, reward contingent on creativity might increase extrinsic motivation. Studies 1 and 2 found that repeatedly giving preadolescent students reward for creative performance in 1 task increased their creativity in subsequent tasks. Study 3 reported that reward promised for creativity increased college students' creative task performance. Second, expected reward for high performance might increase creativity by enhancing perceived self-determination and, therefore, intrinsic task interest. Study 4 found that employees' intrinsic job interest mediated a positive relationship between expected reward for high performance and creative suggestions offered at work. Study 5 found that employees' perceived self-determination mediated a positive relationship between expected reward for high performance and the creativity of anonymous suggestions for helping the organization.