关键词: 能力, 努力, 成就认知

Abstract: Ability and effort are two important factors children use to explain success and failure. A growing body of research shows that children can infer others' ability and effort from behavioral and contextual cues (for example, how much time someone takes to complete a task), and that they increasingly prefer hardworking individuals over smart individuals as they grow older. However, prior studies have typically used single-outcome scenarios, leaving open the question of whether children's reasoning is sensitive to changes of outcomes. The present study investigated whether children's inferences about ability and effort are sensitive to changes in outcome cues (e.g., exam rankings), whether they prefer smart or hardworking individuals, and how these patterns change with age.
The study involved 120 children aged 4-7 years (M = 6.08, 63 girls) and 100 adults (M = 25.69, 50 women) in China. We employed a two-task paradigm in which participants were shown two characters completing two rounds of exams. In the first exam, both characters achieved identical performance outcomes (i.e., the same ranking), but one completed the task faster than the other. Participants were asked to infer which character was smarter, which worked harder, and to provide comparative evaluations of the two characters. In the second exam, the outcome was manipulated such that the character previously judged as smarter (or more hardworking, depending on the condition) was depicted as performing worse (ranked lower) than the other character. Participants were then asked to make the same inferences and evaluations again. We examined whether these inferences and evaluations changed following the outcome manipulation.
Three main findings emerged. First, children as young as 4 years old inferred that the character who finished the task faster as smarter, whereas their inferences about effort showed notable developmental changes. Four-year-olds were unable to infer who was more hardworking; beginning around age 5.5 years, however, children inferred the character who took longer to finish the task as more hardworking. Second, children's inferences of smartness were sensitive to outcome information, whereas their inferences about effort were less likely to change in response to outcome information. Third, their evaluations also showed developmental change, with older children increasingly favoring the hardworking character. In contrast, adults' inferences about both smartness and effort remained stable despite changes in outcomes.
These findings indicate that children's conceptions of smart and effort, as well as their sensitivity to outcome, follow distinct developmental trajectories. Children demonstrate early competence in inferring smartness and these inferences are sensitive to outcomes, whereas their conceptualization of effort develops relatively later and becomes more process-oriented and less outcome-dependent with age. These findings contribute to our understanding of achievement-related cognition and suggest that educators could support children's appreciation of effort by emphasizing process rather than outcome, particularly in early childhood.

Key words: ability, effort, achievement-related cognition