Publication: Parenting practices and children's cognitive effort: a laboratory study
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2023-07
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Abstract
We examine the association between parenting practices (discipline and support) and children's cognitive effort. Cognitive effort is hard to measure; hence, little is known in general about effort dispositions, and in particular about the influence of parenting practices on effort. We present data from a study on almost 1,400 fifth grade students from Berlin and Madrid. Cognitive effort is measured with tests of executive function. The students do the tests under an unincentivised and incentivised condition. We study two effort-related outcomes: "effort direction" - the child's decision to voluntarily do a real-effort task &- and "effort intensity" - the child's performance on the task. Results indicate that both parental discipline and support are associated with effort direction and the presence of incentives moderates this association. However, only parental discipline is (weakly) associated with effort intensity. We conclude that parenting practices primarily influence deliberative rather than instinctual types of cognitive effort.
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Parenting, Effort, Incentives, Cognition