Dyadic Decisions About Effort: How Caregivers Shape Young Children’s Persistence
Current Directions in Psychological Science
Published online on January 27, 2026
Abstract
Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Persistence is essential for learning, but children cannot and should not persist at everything. How do young children decide what is worth their effort? We build a theory of young children’s state persistence as the outcome of a socially guided decision-...
Persistence is essential for learning, but children cannot and should not persist at everything. How do young children decide what is worth their effort? We build a theory of young children’s state persistence as the outcome of a socially guided decision-...