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Children’s beliefs about the contribution of effort and ability to success and failure shape their decisions to persist or give up on challenging tasks, with consequences for their academic success. But how do children learn about the concept of “challenge”? Prior work has shown that parents’ verbal responses to success and failure shape children’s motivational beliefs. In this study, we explore another type of talk - parent and child talk about difficulty - which could contribute to children’s motivational beliefs. We performed secondary analyses of two observational studies of parent-child interactions in the United States (Boston and Philadelphia) from age 3 to 4th grade (Study 1, 51% girls, 65.5% White, at least 43.2% below Federal poverty line) and at 1st grade (Study 2, 54% girls, 72% White, family income-to-needs ratio M(SD) = 4.41(2.95)) to identify talk about difficulty, characterize the content of those statements, and assess whether task context, child and parent gender, child age, and other parent motivational talk were associated with quantity of child and parent difficulty talk. We found that many families did discuss difficulty, with variation among families. Parents and children tended to use general statements to talk about difficulty (e.g., “That was hard!”), and task context affected child and parent difficulty talk. In the NICHD-SECCYD dataset, mothers’ highlighting how task features contributed to task difficulty was positively correlated with their process praise, suggesting that this talk could be motivationally relevant. 

Prior research has shown that the home learning environment (HLE) is critical in the development of spatial skills and that various parental beliefs influence the HLE. However, a comprehensive analysis of the impact of different parental beliefs on the spatial HLE remains lacking, leaving unanswered questions about which specific parental beliefs are most influential and whether inducing a growth mindset can enhance the spatial HLE. To address these gaps, we conducted an online study with parents of 3- to 5-year-olds. We found that parents’ growth mindset about their children’s ability strongly predicted the spatial HLE after controlling for parents’ motivational beliefs about their children, beliefs about their own ability, children’s age, children’s gender, and family SES. Further, reading an article about growth mindset led parents to choose more challenging spatial learning activities for their children. These findings highlight the critical role of parents’ growth mindset in the spatial HLE. Crucially, these findings demonstrate that general growth mindset messages without specific suggestions for parental practices can influence parental behavior intentions. Further, these effects were also observed in the control domain of literacy, underscoring the broad relevance of the growth mindset in the HLE. 

Abstract External representations powerfully support and augment complex human behavior. When navigating, people often consult external representations to help them find the way to go, but do maps or verbal instructions improve spatial knowledge or support effective wayfinding? Here, we examine spatial knowledge with and without external representations in two studies where participants learn a complex virtual environment. In the first study, we asked participants to generate their own maps or verbal instructions, partway through learning. We found no evidence of improved spatial knowledge in a pointing task requiring participants to infer the direction between two targets, either on the same route or on different routes, and no differences between groups in accurately recreating a map of the target landmarks. However, as a methodological note, pointing was correlated with the accuracy of the maps that participants drew. In the second study, participants had access to an accurate map or set of verbal instructions that they could study while learning the layout of target landmarks. Again, we found no evidence of differentially improved spatial knowledge in the pointing task, although we did find that the map group could recreate a map of the target landmarks more accurately. However, overall improvement was high. There was evidence that the nature of improvement across all conditions was specific to initial navigation ability levels. Our findings add to a mixed literature on the role of external representations for navigation and suggest that more substantial intervention—more scaffolding, explicit training, enhanced visualization, perhaps with personalized sequencing—may be necessary to improve navigation ability. 

Research on spatial thinking requires reliable and valid measures of individual differences in various component skills. Spatial perspective taking (PT)-the ability to represent viewpoints different from one's own-is one kind of spatial skill that is especially relevant to navigation. This study had two goals. First, the psychometric properties of four PT tests were examined: Four Mountains Task (FMT), Spatial Orientation Task (SOT), Perspective-Taking Task for Adults (PTT-A), and Photographic Perspective-Taking Task (PPTT). Using item response theory (IRT), item difficulty, discriminability, and efficiency of item information functions were evaluated. Second, the relation of PT scores to general intelligence, working memory, and mental rotation (MR) was assessed. All tasks showed good construct validity except for FMT. PPTT tapped a wide range of PT ability, with maximum measurement precision at average ability. PTT-A captured a lower range of ability. Although SOT contributed less measurement information than other tasks, it did well across a wide range of PT ability. After controlling for general intelligence and working memory, original and IRT-refined versions of PT tasks were each related to MR. PTT-A and PPTT showed relatively more divergent validity from MR than SOT. Tests of dimensionality indicated that PT tasks share one common PT dimension, with secondary task-specific factors also impacting the measurement of individual differences in performance. Advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid PT test that includes a combination of items across tasks are discussed. 

Abstract In this review, I summarize what we know about the development of sex‐related differences in spatial skills, their potential malleability, and their possible causes. Current evidence suggests that sex differences increase in size with age, at least for skills with assessments suitable for use across development. However, male advantages vary from nonexistent to substantial, depending on the skills assessed, task parameters, and culture. Training and practice can improve spatial skills, although interventions tested so far do not eliminate the male advantage (when there is one). The complex pattern of increases with age, task variation, and cultural variation challenges efforts to theorize about causation. Progress requires identifying the underlying cognitive and neural structure of the spatial domain, developing reliable and valid assessment tools suitable for use across wide age ranges, gathering large datasets from a variety of cultural settings, and identifying and investigating specific mechanisms for growth and change.