Gunderson et al. - 1

Question 1

Framework

Answer 1

a basic understanding of ideas and facts that is used when making decisions

Question 2

Person Praise

Answer 2

praising the individual rather than what they are doing.

Question 3

Process Praise

Answer 3

praising what is being done rather than the individual.

Question 4

Entity motivational framework

Answer 4

A belief that behaviour or ability results from a person’s nature

Question 5

Incremental motivational framework

Answer 5

belief that effort drives behaviour and ability which can change.

Question 6

Ecological validity

Answer 6

the extent to which the findings still explain the behaviour in real life situations

Question 7

Background to the study of Gunderson

Answer 7

1. Research shows that the way parents praise their young children impacts a child’s later ideas about reasons for behaviour and beliefs.
2. Praising children’s effort rather than their ability leads to the idea (framework) that working hard can change achievements.

Question 8

Effect of person praise

Answer 8

1. Person praise seems to lead children though not through conscious processes to the idea that they are born with or without an ability.
2. This in turn leads to fixed theory which is known as entity theory or entity motivational framework.

Question 9

Effect of process praise

Answer 9

1. Process praise appears to lead children to see a link between effort and success.
2. They are likely to see ability as changeable and are more likely to keep trying to do better,
3. This change theory is known as incremental theory or incremental motivational framework

Question 10

Praise and gender

Answer 10

1. Boys tend to think of ability and behaviour as changeable suggesting that they receive process praise.
2. Praise for girls is more likely to lead to entity theory meaning that girls receive more person praise.

Question 11

Method of Gunderson

Answer 11

1. Follow children over a long period of time
2. Identify if the parents use person or process praise at home
3. Visit the child at 14, 26, and 35 months. Five years later the children’s ideas about behaviour were measured and related to the type of praise they received.
4. Had a range of genders and races
5. Neither those collecting the data nor the participants knew that praise was being studied to avoid bias
6. At each visit, participants were asked to go about a typical day in the home. The caregiver-child interactions were videotaped in 90 minutes sessions
7. Later at 7 - 8 years old the same children answered two questionnaires about what they thought led to a person’s intelligence and what led people to act morally. The questions included children’s ideas, motivational framework, and their socio-moral views ( the questions were based on intelligence and socio-moral domain)

Question 12

Double-blind technique

Answer 12

When the aims of the study are withheld from both participants and researchers

Question 13

Results of Gunderson

Answer 13

1. On average 3% of all parental comments to the child were praise
2. Process praise was 18% of all praise and person praise was 16% showing similar proportions
3. 24.4% of praise for boys was process praise compared with 10.3% for girls.
4. The more process praise there is in early childhood, the more likely the child will believe that effort is worthwhile. (correlation of 0.35)
5. There was no relationship between parents giving person praise and children later showing an entity motivational framework. Early person praise did not give fixed frameworks later in life

Question 14

Conclusion of Gunderson

Answer 14

1. A clear relationship was found between parents’ use of process praise and a child’s later use of an incremental motivational framework (ability being changeable)
2. Studies aim was only partly supported because the study did not find that parental use of person praise led to an entity motivational framework (ability is fixed)
3. Researchers found that boys received more process praise than girls.
4. Also, boys tended to have more of an incremental framework than girls.

Question 15

Strengths of the study (Gunderson)

Answer 15

1. Gunderson (2013) shows that Dweck’s findings in experimental studies where the setting is artificial are also found in a natural environment. Findings from two different methods support one another so it is more reliable
2. Researchers who videotaped and transcribed the data did not know that parental praise was the point of interest. This helps to avoid bias in gathering qualitative data.

Question 16

Weaknesses of the study (Gunderson)

Answer 16

1. The ethics of the study could be criticised as the participants were deceived and did not know what the study was about. For ethical reasons, there must be as little deceit as possible in a study. If there was a debrief this may be seen as ethically acceptable
2. Parents may have changed their style of praise because they were being observed even though they did not know what aspect of their behaviour was being observed. This could make the data lack validity

Question 17

Ethics

Answer 17

Moral principles about how someone should behave in society

Question 18

Generalisability

Answer 18

the extent to which the results of a student represent the whole population, not just the sample used