Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

A child’s perceived ability, over and above actual ability,matters for various behavioral outcomes, academic or personal.In the current paper, we looked at one type of self-efficacy:children’s perceived ability to regulate their own negativeemotions. Our question was whether regulatory emotional self-efficacy (RESE) affects math learning for children who arefaced with homelessness. The specific math enrichmentcentered on child-guided math practice: Children were given acommercially available app and encouraged to pick out theirown practice problems. Our thought was that RESE mightaffect children’s learning when they are given a chance todetermine their own math-practice path. The goal of the currentstudy was to establish this link empirically. The sampleincluded 5- to 12-year-olds who attended a summer programorganized for homeless children. Results confirmed ourhypothesis. Children who scored lowest on the RESE scales (N= 40) benefited less from the math practice than children whoscored highest (N = 46). Specifically, the improvement in mathwas correlated with number of practice sessions only for high-RESE children, not for low-RESE children. These resultssuggest that RESE is an important factor in learning math, tobe considered when developing student-centered pedagogy.