Neuroscientific research regarding mindsets is so far scarce, especially among children. Moreover, even though research indicates the importance of domain-specificity of mindsets, this has not yet been investigated in neuroscientific studies regarding implicit beliefs. The purpose of this study was to examine general intelligence and math ability mindsets and their relations to automatic reactions to negative feedback in mathematics in the Finnish elementary school context. For this, event-related potentials of 97 elementary school students were measured during the completion of an age-appropriate math task, where the participants received performance-relevant feedback throughout the task. Higher growth mindset was marginally associated with a larger P300 response and significantly associated with a smaller later peaking negative-going waveform. Moreover, with the domain-specific experimental setting we found a higher growth mindset regarding math ability, but not general intelligence, to be associated with these brain responses elicited by negative feedback regarding errors in math. This suggests that it might be important to address domain-specific and even academic-domain-specific beliefs in addition to general mindsets in research and practice.

中文翻译：

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小学生数学负反馈自动反应的心态及神经机制

迄今为止，关于心态的神经科学研究很少，尤其是在儿童中。此外，尽管研究表明心态的领域特异性的重要性，但尚未在有关内隐信念的神经科学研究中对此进行调查。本研究的目的是检查芬兰小学环境中的一般智力和数学能力思维方式以及它们与对数学中的负面反馈的自动反应的关系。为此，在完成适合年龄的数学任务期间测量了 97 名小学生的事件相关潜力，参与者在整个任务中收到了与表现相关的反馈。较高的成长心态与较大的 P300 反应略有关联，并与较小的后期峰值负向波形显着相关。此外，在特定领域的实验设置中，我们发现关于数学能力的更高成长心态，而不是一般智力，与这些由数学错误的负面反馈引起的大脑反应相关。这表明，除了研究和实践中的一般心态之外，解决特定领域甚至特定学术领域的信念可能很重要。