Young children calibrate effort based on the trajectory of their performance
Learners must constantly decide which challenges are worth pursuing. When making this decision, one important signal may be whether performance has improved over time. Here, across four pre-registered experiments (N = 360, ages 4 to 6), we found that young children who were given evidence that their performance was improving were more likely to persist on a challenging task than children who were given evidence that their performance was not changing, even when final performance was matched. This effect was robust to differing reward contingencies and across in-person and online testing contexts. Older children made more accurate predictions about their performance, and in some contexts were more likely to choose a challenge, than younger children. Our results suggest that children will persist more if they are provided with clear feedback about their progress over time.