Children Persist Less When Adults Take Over

Leonard, Julia A.; Martinez, Dominique N.; Dashineau, Samantha; Park, Anne; Mackey, Allyson P.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/xkshv

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…We found that children were more engaged with the exhibits when they interacted collaboratively with their caregivers, as compared to when they or their caregivers were leading the interactions. This aligns with results of earlier studies on caregiverchild interactions in museum settings, in which collaborative interactions led to the most engagement (e.g., Medina and Sobel, 2020;Leonard et al, 2021;Sobel et al, 2021;Sobel and Stricker, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Dinos and GoPros: Children’s exploratory behaviors in a museum and their reflections on their learning

Weisberg

Dunlap²,

Sobel³

2023

Front. Psychol.

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Research in both laboratory and museum settings suggests that children’s exploration and caregiver–child interaction relate to children’s learning and engagement. Most of this work, however, takes a third-person perspective on children’s exploration of a single activity or exhibit, and does not consider children’s perspectives on their own exploration. In contrast, the current study recruited 6-to 10-year-olds (N = 52) to wear GoPro cameras, which recorded their first-person perspectives as they explored a dinosaur exhibition in a natural history museum. During a 10-min period, children were allowed to interact with 34 different exhibits, their caregivers and families, and museum staff however they wished. Following their exploration, children were asked to reflect on their exploration while watching the video they created and to report on whether they had learned anything. Children were rated as more engaged when they explored collaboratively with their caregivers. Children were more likely to report that they learned something when they were more engaged, and when they spent more time at exhibits that presented information didactically rather than being interactive. These results suggest that static exhibits have an important role to play in fostering learning experiences in museums, potentially because such exhibits allow for more caregiver–child interaction.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Dinos and GoPros: Children’s exploratory behaviors in a museum and their reflections on their learning

Weisberg

Dunlap²,

Sobel³

2023

Front. Psychol.

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“…What might influence whether a child brushes longer on a given day? When children decide whether or not to persist, they consider information about expected utilities (cost and rewards), which is often communicated via adults' behavior (Bandura, 1977;Leonard et al, 2017Leonard et al, , 2020Leonard et al, , 2021Lucca & Sommerville, 2018;Lucca et al, 2019Lucca et al, , 2020. For example, infants and preschoolers pay attention to adults' actions and outcomes and rationally try harder after watching adults' efforts lead to success rather than failure (Leonard et al, 2020;Lucca et al, 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Daily fluctuations in young children’s persistence

et al. 2021

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Children's behavior changes from day to day, but the factors that contribute to its variability are understudied. We developed a novel repeated measures paradigm to study children's persistence by capitalizing on a task that children complete every day: toothbrushing (N = 81; 48% female; 36-47 months; 80% white, 14% Multiracial, 10% Hispanic, 2% Asian, 1% Black; 1195 observations). Children brushed longer on days when their parents used more praise (d = 0.23) and less instruction (d = -0.22).Sensitivity to mood, sleep, and parent stress varied across children, suggesting that identifying the factors that shape an individual child's persistence could lead to personalized interventions.

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“…We had two competing hypotheses regarding age: Either the effect of condition would be more pronounced in older children, or children across the age span would be equally sensitive to and benefit from pretend play (e.g., White et al, 2017). To further examine the robustness of our findings, we supplemented these analyses with Wilcoxon rank-sum tests, which have been used in the past to examine persistence in young children (e.g., Leonard et al, 2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Walking in Her Shoes: Pretending to Be a Female Role Model Increases Young Girls’ Persistence in Science

2022

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Pretend play is a ubiquitous learning tool in early childhood, enabling children to explore possibilities outside of their current reality. Here, we demonstrate how pretend play can be leveraged to empower girls in scientific domains. American children ages 4 to 7 years ( N = 240) played a challenging science activity in one of three conditions. Children in the exposure condition heard about a successful gender-matched scientist, children in the roleplay condition pretended to be that scientist, and children in the baseline condition did not receive information about the scientist. Girls in the roleplay condition, but not in the exposure condition, persisted longer in the science activity than girls in the baseline condition. Pretending to be the scientist equated girls’ persistence to that of boys. These findings suggest that pretend play of role models motivates young girls in science and may help reduce gender gaps from their roots.

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Children Persist Less When Adults Take Over

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

Dinos and GoPros: Children’s exploratory behaviors in a museum and their reflections on their learning

Dinos and GoPros: Children’s exploratory behaviors in a museum and their reflections on their learning

Daily fluctuations in young children’s persistence

Walking in Her Shoes: Pretending to Be a Female Role Model Increases Young Girls’ Persistence in Science

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