Periodic Reporting for period 4 - BRAINBELIEFS (Proving or improving yourself: longitudinal effects of ability beliefs on neural feedback processing and school outcomes)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-09-01 al 2023-02-28
What is the problem/issue being addressed?
Education is of vital importance for youth to become happy and successful members of society. Unfortunately, not everyone completes an education with equal success and joy. Notable differences among children and adolescents are their motivation and resilience. For example, some view feedback about mistakes as a learning opportunity, while it causes others to give up or to choose easier tasks to avoid failing again. Although these individual differences are well-known, it is far from straightforward to know how unmotivated and under-achieving students can be helped, especially during adolescence. The ultimate aim of this project is to enable youth to optimally develop their potential at school, to maximize their chances to become balanced and successful members of society.
Why is it important for society?
It is increasingly known that adolescents experience high amounts of stress and pressure in our current societies. At the same time, it is known that school motivation drops during adolescence. This project investigates the development of motivation and resilience to setbacks during adolescence. The results of this project will be important to understand how adolescents can develop healthy self-regulation skills and motivation, to cope with performance pressure and stress, and to transition into adults who make decisions that are positive for their own personal development and health, as well as for society.
What are the overall objectives?
The overall scientific objectives that lead towards the aimed societal impacts are: 1) To understand why adolescents, even when they have similar learning potential, show different learning behaviors in challenging (school) situations and 2) to understand how we can stimulate adolescents to become resilient learners, such as choosing for challenges to improve themselves, and staying motivated even when experiencing setbacks at school.
Education is of vital importance for youth to become happy and successful members of society. Unfortunately, not everyone completes an education with equal success and joy. Notable differences among children and adolescents are their motivation and resilience. For example, some view feedback about mistakes as a learning opportunity, while it causes others to give up or to choose easier tasks to avoid failing again. Although these individual differences are well-known, it is far from straightforward to know how unmotivated and under-achieving students can be helped, especially during adolescence. The ultimate aim of this project is to enable youth to optimally develop their potential at school, to maximize their chances to become balanced and successful members of society.
Why is it important for society?
It is increasingly known that adolescents experience high amounts of stress and pressure in our current societies. At the same time, it is known that school motivation drops during adolescence. This project investigates the development of motivation and resilience to setbacks during adolescence. The results of this project will be important to understand how adolescents can develop healthy self-regulation skills and motivation, to cope with performance pressure and stress, and to transition into adults who make decisions that are positive for their own personal development and health, as well as for society.
What are the overall objectives?
The overall scientific objectives that lead towards the aimed societal impacts are: 1) To understand why adolescents, even when they have similar learning potential, show different learning behaviors in challenging (school) situations and 2) to understand how we can stimulate adolescents to become resilient learners, such as choosing for challenges to improve themselves, and staying motivated even when experiencing setbacks at school.
In one project, we ran a longitudinal study to address the first objective. We have obtained complete data at the first measurement (wave 1) from 299 young adolescents, whom we planned to follow for three years*. These participants completed a yearly questionnaire about their (mindset) beliefs and motivations related to school and learning, and yearly performed two behavioral learning tasks. These tasks were designed to measure ‘learning behavior’, e.g. whether they chose easy of more challenging math tasks. 68 adolescents also participated in the brain imaging part of the study, in which we used fMRI to investigate how neural effort and feedback processing is related to mindset.
*Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the quality and quantity of the follow-up measures. For the questionnaire/behavioral part, we have focused our analyses on cross-sectional data, but we have also combined data from the two projects to run longitudinal analyses. For the brain imaging part, the sample size of longitudinal data is too low to provide robust conclusions, so we have been limited to cross-sectional fMRI analyses.
Main results of the first project:
- Growth mindset is related to more challenging choices during a math task in children aged 12/13 years old.
- Mindset naturally occurs in different combinations with other motivation variables (e.g. achievement goals), leading to more than two (growth vs. fixed) mindset profiles. The accompanying achievement goal orientation leads to more or less adaptive outcomes, also for those with a growth mindset.
- These mindset profiles can change during development, with students transitioning from a growth to a fixed profile and vice versa from 12/13 years old to 14/15 years old.
- Anticipation of reward and effort activates distinct neural systems in 12/13-year old adolescents, but this is not related to mindset.
- Resting state functional connectivity between reward- and cognitive control related networks is not associated with mindset.
In the second project, we have conducted an EEG and physiology lab study (bachelor students, N=117, and adolescents, N = 50), and developed an intervention for adolescents (‘Explore your brain’). This intervention was designed to stimulate a growth mindset, with the unique addition of an experiential component, in which adolescents experienced their influence on their own brain processes, through custom-made EEG-based neurofeedback games. We ran a randomized control trial (RCT) with almost 440 adolescents, who received the four lessons of this intervention or the control lessons in their own school. The first follow-up measure took place right before the COVID-19 pandemic. The second follow-up measurement was timed exactly during the pandemic, so we adapted it to measure the effect of growth mindset on resilience to COVID-19 related school stress.
Main results of the second project:
- The lab EEG study showed a relation between mindset and error monitoring, but this relation was not found when we corrected for overlap between stimulus and response/error processing. This implies that the relation between mindset and error monitoring is more complex than previously assumed.
- The lab physiology studies showed that in bachelor students, neither mindset nor physiological state predicts effort-related choices on a math task. The study in adolescents showed that growth mindset was associated with fewer school burnout symptoms, but this relation was not mediated by physiological resilience (vagal activity).
- The results of the one-year follow up in our ‘Explore Your Brain’ RCT showed that the mindset intervention led to sustained higher growth mindset a year later, and protected against a drop in (math) grades.
- The results of the two-year follow-up showed that adolescents with a stronger growth mindset, including those that had received our Explore Your Brain intervention one year before the COVID-19 pandemic, showed more adaptive coping with, and resilience to, covid19-stress.
*Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the quality and quantity of the follow-up measures. For the questionnaire/behavioral part, we have focused our analyses on cross-sectional data, but we have also combined data from the two projects to run longitudinal analyses. For the brain imaging part, the sample size of longitudinal data is too low to provide robust conclusions, so we have been limited to cross-sectional fMRI analyses.
Main results of the first project:
- Growth mindset is related to more challenging choices during a math task in children aged 12/13 years old.
- Mindset naturally occurs in different combinations with other motivation variables (e.g. achievement goals), leading to more than two (growth vs. fixed) mindset profiles. The accompanying achievement goal orientation leads to more or less adaptive outcomes, also for those with a growth mindset.
- These mindset profiles can change during development, with students transitioning from a growth to a fixed profile and vice versa from 12/13 years old to 14/15 years old.
- Anticipation of reward and effort activates distinct neural systems in 12/13-year old adolescents, but this is not related to mindset.
- Resting state functional connectivity between reward- and cognitive control related networks is not associated with mindset.
In the second project, we have conducted an EEG and physiology lab study (bachelor students, N=117, and adolescents, N = 50), and developed an intervention for adolescents (‘Explore your brain’). This intervention was designed to stimulate a growth mindset, with the unique addition of an experiential component, in which adolescents experienced their influence on their own brain processes, through custom-made EEG-based neurofeedback games. We ran a randomized control trial (RCT) with almost 440 adolescents, who received the four lessons of this intervention or the control lessons in their own school. The first follow-up measure took place right before the COVID-19 pandemic. The second follow-up measurement was timed exactly during the pandemic, so we adapted it to measure the effect of growth mindset on resilience to COVID-19 related school stress.
Main results of the second project:
- The lab EEG study showed a relation between mindset and error monitoring, but this relation was not found when we corrected for overlap between stimulus and response/error processing. This implies that the relation between mindset and error monitoring is more complex than previously assumed.
- The lab physiology studies showed that in bachelor students, neither mindset nor physiological state predicts effort-related choices on a math task. The study in adolescents showed that growth mindset was associated with fewer school burnout symptoms, but this relation was not mediated by physiological resilience (vagal activity).
- The results of the one-year follow up in our ‘Explore Your Brain’ RCT showed that the mindset intervention led to sustained higher growth mindset a year later, and protected against a drop in (math) grades.
- The results of the two-year follow-up showed that adolescents with a stronger growth mindset, including those that had received our Explore Your Brain intervention one year before the COVID-19 pandemic, showed more adaptive coping with, and resilience to, covid19-stress.
The results of project 1 have advanced the field by including advanced ‘person-oriented approaches’ (latent profile analysis), the results of which have provided novel insights that nuance mindset conceptualization. More specifically, we show that a growth mindset per se is not necessarily beneficial, it depends on the combination with other motivational constructs such as performance goals.
The physiology studies in project 2 have advanced the research field by providing novel approaches that integrate methods to measure the impact of beliefs at different levels, including more objective methods to measure how mindset and goals relate to investing effort.
The ‘Explore your brain’ intervention we developed in project 2 moves beyond the state of the art in several ways. Previous results of mindset interventions have been mixed, and when positive, effect sizes were small. Our intervention is unique as it integrates the more standard psychosocial approach with an experiential component, in which students experience the influence they have on their own brain and learning processes using mobile-EEG-based neurofeedback. Our RCT showed larger effects than previous interventions. The intervention still positively influenced students 2 years after the lesson series and during the stressful COVID-19 period.
The physiology studies in project 2 have advanced the research field by providing novel approaches that integrate methods to measure the impact of beliefs at different levels, including more objective methods to measure how mindset and goals relate to investing effort.
The ‘Explore your brain’ intervention we developed in project 2 moves beyond the state of the art in several ways. Previous results of mindset interventions have been mixed, and when positive, effect sizes were small. Our intervention is unique as it integrates the more standard psychosocial approach with an experiential component, in which students experience the influence they have on their own brain and learning processes using mobile-EEG-based neurofeedback. Our RCT showed larger effects than previous interventions. The intervention still positively influenced students 2 years after the lesson series and during the stressful COVID-19 period.