Effort, interest, and recall: beliefs and behaviors of preschoolers

A study was conducted to investigate preschoolers' beliefs about the relations between effort, interest and recall, and to determine the realism of these beliefs. It was found that the research participants believed that other children their age would try harder to remember if they were highly interested in the task and that these extra efforts would improve recall. The results indicate that the first belief held true for boys but not for girls. No evidence was found to support the second belief. These findings suggest the children's beliefs about effort-interest-recall relations are generally naive.