Mindsets have been identified as an important factor in explaining learning differences among students. Growth mindset students have been shown to recover from mistakes easier than fixed mindset students, and recent neuroscientific research has shown differences in the brain’s event-related potentials to errors in fixed and growth mindset participants. The purpose of this study was to examine and evaluate these differences in the Finnish elementary school context. To achieve this, event-related potentials of ten 8-9-year-old female students, five of them with a fixed mindset and five with a growth mindset, were recorded during a go/no-go task. Differences between the two groups emerged; however, they were different from the results of some previous studies in the field. These findings are discussed in the light of earlier neuroscientific research related to mindsets, including limitations and suggestions for future research in the field.
Part of the book: Behavioral Neuroscience