Psychology 9-1 GCSE - 

1.2.2 - Gunderson et al. (2013) Parent Praise to 1-to 3-Year-Olds Predicts Children's Motivational Frameworks 5 Years Later:

Aims - 

Researchers wanted to know if children are effected by different types of parent praise given in a natural setting. If parents give girls less process praise and more person praise than boys. Parents use of process or person praise in early childhood influences the childs view later on.

Procedures - 

29 boys and 24 girls were visited at home every 4 months from when the child was 14 months old. The researchers looked at parents use of praise at home. 5 years later the children's ideas about the behavior was measured and related to the type of praise they had received.

Results - 

Process praise was 18% of all praise and person praise was 16%. 24% of praise for boys was process praise compared to 10% for girls. The more process praise received in early childhood, the more likely the children when older will believe that putting in effort is worthwhile. Boys see ability and behavior as interchangeable, because of the process praise. While girls see them as fixed because of person praise.

Conclusions - 

A clear relationship was found between the parents use of process praise and a child's later use of incremental motivational framework (ability being changeable). However no link was found between person praise and entity motivational framework (ability is fixed). There are gender differences, girls receive more process praise than boys.

Strengths - 

• It was done in a natural setting.
• It supports Carol Dwecks theory (1.1.3).
• Research was conducted with a double blind method.

Weaknesses - 

• Participants were deceived, they thought the study was about child development. This is an ethical problem.
• Parents may have changed their behavior as they were being observed. So a lack of validity.