Blue dots, yellow dots!

For 6- to 9-year-olds

Your child will complete four trials of a dot-counting task to try out for a "club". At first, your child will learn that they did not get into the club, but they will get into the club later! Your child will answer questions about their own ability and choose whether they want to play again (up to three times total). At the end of the study, we will explain that the reason that they did not get into the club at first was due to an error in the system and then celebrate their success so that all children leave feeling proud of their performance.

Persisting in the face of challenge is central to learning. However, we cannot and should not persist at everything! How do children decide what is worth their effort? Here, we look at whether children decide whether to keep going based on how they think about their past failure - was it due to something in their control or not? Ultimately, we hope to uncover the factors that lead to increased persistence in the face of failure when it might matter most.

15 minutes

After you finish the study, we will email you a $5 Giftogram gift card within a week of participation. To be eligible for the gift card and certificate: (1) your child must be in the age range for this study, (2) English is (one of) your child's first language(s), (3) you need to submit a valid consent statement, and (4) we need to see that there is a child with you during the experiment. Each child is eligible to participate to receive a gift card only once; participants cannot do the study more than once for compensation.