Parenting Practices and Children’s Cognitive Effort: A Laboratory Study

Abstract

We examine the association between parenting practices (discipline and support) and children’s cognitive effort. Cognitive effort is hard to measure; hence, little is known about effort dispositions, and how parenting practices affect effort. We analyse data from 1,148 fifth-grade students from Berlin and Madrid (around 11 years of age). Cognitive effort is measured with tests of executive function, carried out under two reward schemes: an unincentivised and incentivised condition. We study two effort-related outcomes: “effort direction” – the child’s decision to voluntarily do a real-effort task – and “effort intensity” – the child’s performance on the task. In line with theoretical expectations, results indicate that both parental discipline and support are associated with effort direction when the moderating role of incentives is taken into account. However, only parental discipline is (weakly) associated with effort intensity. We conclude that parenting practices primarily influence deliberative rather than instinctual types of cognitive effort.