AS CHILDREN GROW, PERSISTENCE UNDERGOES DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES IN THE WAY IT IS DISPLAYED. INFANTS' SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS INFLUENCE WHETHER THEY DECIDE TO PERSIST. INFANTS CAN DECIDE WHETHER TO PERSIST IN TRYING TO SOLVE A PROBLEM OR WHETHER IS IT MORE EFFICIENT FOR THEM TO SEEK HELP FROM AN ADULT INSTEAD. CAREGIVERS WHO MODEL PERSISTENCE HELP DEVELOP A CHILD'S OWN PERSISTENCE. INFANTS ARE MORE LIKELY TO TRY HARD TO OVERCOME A CHALLENGE IF THEY HAVE PREVIOUSLY SEEN AN ADULT MODEL PERSIST AND SUCCEED AT THE TASK.

There is evidence that persistence undergoes a developmental change in its qualities from infancy through early childhood. When infants are presented with a new task, they typically transition from inattention to passive exploration (mouthing, touching and holding objects) to goal-directed, persistent behaviour in which they actively explore the features of objects, for example by turning, banging, shaking or pushing buttons in purposeful ways to achieve effects.

At around six months, most infants display this purposeful manipulation of objects. By nine months, infants can select actions that are most appropriate for “solving” a specific task, for exmple, choosing to push buttons rather than banging to create sound effects on a toy telephone. By 15 months, infants strive to complete tasks independently, often resisting intervention from others. It is at this period that infants are thought to display a “persistent task approach”,

which is the ability to shift attention between subcomponents of a task to attain a final goal while maintaining focus on the larger task at hand, for example, finding a correctly shaped block, inserting in the correct hole, then moving to the next shape until all blocks have been inserted into the shape sorter. Caregivers who understand these changing displays of persistence at different stages, and create an environment for children to develop persistence, can help them develop this approach to learning.

An influential longitudinal study conducted in New York, USA from 1956 to 1977 found that persistence is a temperamental trait of infants. Some infants are born with an ability to pay attention longer and display persistence in a task when left on their own. Others may not be able to.

Although the trait is stable, the child’s environment and interactions with adults can help facilitate how the trait is expressed and enable the child’s future learning.

Social environments play a part in whether infants decide to persist. Infants who see adults work hard to succeed persist longer at their own tasks.

To look at the effect of adult models on infants’ persistence, 15-month-olds were assigned to either an ‘Effort’ condition in which they saw an adult repeatedly try, using various methods, to achieve each of two different goals, a ‘No Effort’ condition in which the adult achieved the goals effortlessly, or a Baseline condition. Infants were then given a difficult, novel task. cAcross an initial study and two pre-registered experiments, infants in the ‘Effort’ condition made more attempts to achieve the goal than infants in the other two conditions. Teaching cues modulated the effect. The results suggest that adult models causally affect infants’ persistence, and that infants can generalise the value of persistence to novel tasks.

Adults who model persistence, and create environments for infants to persist, can help develop this trait in infants. Spending time playing with infants, encouraging them by demonstrating how a task can be accomplished, and letting them try it for themselves all help to build persistence.

Research has shown that infants are able to make decisions about how much effort to put into persisting at a task by gathering social information from others. Infants are ubiquitous and smart social learners. They acquire a wide variety of knowledge by observing and interacting with others. Infants also implement this social learning to guide their own persistence.

One study showed that babies are more likely to try hard to overcome a challenge if they have previously seen an adult model persist and succeed at the task. A study of 96 typically developing 18-month old babies found that their persistence varied as a function of both their expectations about how hard the task should be and how likely the experimenter was to help them. In the experiment, an out-of-reach toy that was only accessible by pulling a rope was placed near the babies.

Babies first watched an adult solve the problem. Depending on which condition the researchers randomly assigned the baby to, they either saw an actor easily accomplish her goal, fail to accomplish her goal, or work hard before achieving her goal. They then gave all three groups of infants what appeared to be the same task, but, unknown to them, their task was impossible – the toy at the end of the rope was glued to the table, such that no matter how hard they pulled (and they pulled hard!) they could never get the toy.

The first group of babies who saw the actor easily solve the task knew two things: this should be easy, and my social partner is skilled. When they were given the task, and it was harder than they had anticipated, they quickly grew frustrated and traded off trying for help-seeking. The second group of babies, who saw the actor fail, completely disengaged, choosing not to try or seek help. The most exciting results came from the third group of babies, the ones who knew the task should be challenging but solvable. These babies ramped up their trying over time, and unlike the other babies, did not get frustrated or demotivated.

This suggests that babies can decide when to persist on a task without an adult’s prompting.