Infants make more attempts to achieve a goal when they see adults persist
Name
Leonard_Lee_Schulz_manuscript.pdf
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3.76 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
decd7b8351cb744a4075f29da21b57ce
Author(s)
Leonard, Julia
Lee, Yu-Na
Schulz, Laura E
Date Issued
September 2017
Journal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Leonard, Julia A., et al. “Infants Make More Attempts to Achieve a Goal When They See Adults Persist.” Science, vol. 357, no. 6357, Sept. 2017, pp. 1290–94.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Persistence, above and beyond IQ, is associated with long-term academic outcomes. To look at the effect of adult models on infants’ persistence, we conducted an experiment in which 15-month-olds were assigned to one of three conditions: an Effort condition in which they saw an adult try repeatedly, using various methods, to achieve each of two different goals; a No Effort condition in which the adult achieved the goals effortlessly; or a Baseline condition. Infants were then given a difficult, novel task. Across an initial study and two preregistered experiments (N = 262), infants in the Effort condition made more attempts to achieve the goal than did infants in the other conditions. Pedagogical cues modulated the effect. The results suggest that adult models causally affect infants’ persistence and that infants can generalize the value of persistence to novel tasks.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aan2317
