Isabelle Eribo
Research Mentor: Emily Yerington
Mentor Department: Combined Program in Education & Psychology, LSA
Author(s): Isabelle Eribo, Emily Yerington, Susan Gelman, Priti Shah
Session: Session 2 (10:00 AM – 10:50 AM)
Presentation Type: Poster 53
Abstract
Essentialist beliefs, meaning the view that cognitive traits are innate and fixed, can shape adult expectations and support for children, but how these beliefs differ between key developmental contexts like home and school is not well understood. To address this gap, we compare essentialist attitudes toward core executive functions (EFs), including attention and impulse control, between parents and teachers. Using an online survey, we collected and analyzed data from 109 parents (Mage = 46.14 years, SD = 11.68) and 82 teachers (Mage = 46.33 years, SD = 10.71). We measured their agreement with statements about whether attention and impulse control are innate, stable over time, biologically determined, and predictable across situations and lifespan outcomes, as well as how much these skills change based on a child’s state, context, or recent experiences. Parents scored a mean essentialism score (M) of 3.81 (SD = 0.54) on attention essentialism and M = 3.84 (SD = 0.48) on impulse control essentialism, while teachers scored M = 3.83 (SD = 0.54) and M = 3.93 (SD = 0.57). Results indicate that, on average, parents and teachers did not differ significantly in their essentialist beliefs about executive functions, t(173.87) = -0.24, p = .81 for attention and t(155.9) = -1.21, p = .23 for impulse control, with negligible to small effect sizes (d = -0.03 and d = -0.18). By directly measuring adults’ beliefs about the nature and variability of executive functions, this study helps clarify how essentialist thinking operates across key developmental contexts. Future work should examine how these shared essentialist beliefs relate to adults’ expectations, interpretations of children’s behavior, and responses to short-term fluctuations in executive functioning.
