Maternal Socialization Responses to Preschoolers’ Success and Struggle: Links to Contextual Factors and Academic and Cognitive Outcomes

Peer Feedback Reflects the Mindset and Academic Motivation of Learners

“…The same connection was not evident among the Finnish students: their neutral praise rather reflected their growth mindset, but neutral praise was not associated with academic motivation. This is in accordance with previous findings that neutral feedback, similar to process-focused praise, plays a positive role in promoting cognitive development in learning because it yields enhancing information to the recipients (Ferrar et al, 2019), as outcome praise does in the present study. However, the lack of an association between praising and positive academic motivation implies that the notions of lifelong learning and process orientation set out in the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2016) are not yet established in Finnish schools.…”

“…In accordance with the recommendations of Gunderson et al (2013) and based on confirmatory factor analysis (CFA, conducted by the authors of this paper), the instrument was divided into three factors [Chinese: χ 2 (83) = 222.560, CFI = 0.946, TLI = 0.921, RMSEA = 0.046, SRMR = 0.040; Finnish: χ 2 (87) = 393.528, CFI = 0.950, TLI = 0.931, RMSEA = 0.071, SRMR = 0.049]: neutral praise (e.g., “Fine result,” “Great!”), person praise (e.g., “You are so gifted,” “You were really lucky!”) and process praise (e.g., “You must have worked hard to achieve this score,” “It was worthwhile reading for the exam!”). Equally noteworthy was that, in the present study, neutral praise included both neutral acknowledgment ( Ferrar et al, 2019 ) and outcome praise ( Kamins and Dweck, 1999 ), and person praise included luck ( Butler, 1986 , 2000 ). All the items are presented in the Supplementary Appendix .…”

“…and process praise (e.g., "You must have worked hard to achieve this score, " "It was worthwhile reading for the exam!"). Equally noteworthy was that, in the present study, neutral praise included both neutral acknowledgment (Ferrar et al, 2019) and outcome praise (Kamins and Dweck, 1999), and person praise included luck (Butler, 1986(Butler, , 2000. All the items are presented in the Supplementary Appendix.…”

“…Other feedback styles such as neutral acknowledgment ( Ferrar et al, 2019 ), outcome praise ( Kamins and Dweck, 1999 ) and luck judgment ( Butler, 1986 , 2000 ) also affect cognitive and motivational development. According to Kamins and Dweck (1999) , outcome praise helps to avoid negative responses in the face of setbacks, and neutral acknowledgment has also been found to promote individuals’ cognitive development and to motivate learning ( Ferrar et al, 2019 ). Moreover, the impact of neutral feedback generally derives from the fact that “neutral acknowledgments may communicate to the child that their task behavior is worth attention, which could increase their interest in and motivation toward learning opportunities” ( Ferrar et al, 2019 , p. 376).…”

“…According to Kamins and Dweck (1999) , outcome praise helps to avoid negative responses in the face of setbacks, and neutral acknowledgment has also been found to promote individuals’ cognitive development and to motivate learning ( Ferrar et al, 2019 ). Moreover, the impact of neutral feedback generally derives from the fact that “neutral acknowledgments may communicate to the child that their task behavior is worth attention, which could increase their interest in and motivation toward learning opportunities” ( Ferrar et al, 2019 , p. 376). In other words, neutral feedback conveys positive but mixed (i.e., ego-involved and task-involved) rather than clear and unidimensional messages ( Butler, 1987 ).…”