**1. Introduction**

In this chapter, mindsets and differences in the neural mechanisms of attention allocation and other automatic reactions to errors between fixed and growth mindset students are discussed. The chapter presents results from a pilot study examining and evaluating these differences among girls in the Finnish elementary school context. These findings are discussed in the light of previous neuroscience research related to mindsets, including limitations of the studies conducted so far and suggestions for future research in this field.

Mindsets are implicit beliefs individuals hold about the malleability of basic qualities and abilities. People with a fixed mindset (the entity theory) believe human qualities are static; those with a growth mindset (the incremental theory) believe basic qualities can be developed [1]. The theory about mindsets helps us understand how people make sense of the world and their experiences [2].

The theory can, for example, help us understand individual differences in goal pursuit, self-regulation, and response to feedback and setbacks by shedding light on how people construct meaning, interpret their experiences, and respond to their world. Indeed, there is a growing literature describing the connections between different mindsets to different behaviors and outcomes (e.g., see [3, 4]).

Mindsets are also highly relevant when it comes to the educational context. Indeed, in the last decades, they have been identified as an important factor in explaining learning differences among students [5]. Moreover, they seem to be especially relevant in certain academic domains, such as mathematics [6, 7]. Mathematics seems to be a subject about which people tend to hold more of a fixed mindset when compared to other educational subjects [6, 8]. Indeed, compared to achievement in social science and other subjects, achievement in mathematics is often believed to depend more on an innate ability that is uncontrollable [8]. Interestingly, holding a growth mindset about mathematical ability seems to be especially beneficial for girls when compared to boys, leading to higher grades in math [9]. Thus, as growth and fixed mindsets seem to be differentially related to the students' academic outcomes, the effort they put into learning, and the way students cope with setbacks and failures, it is highly important to consider and address mindsets in the educational context [7, 10–12].

In order to shed more light on mindsets and how they affect behavior, there has, in the recent years, been a growing interest in understanding the mechanisms behind the relations between mindsets and behavioral outcomes, including interest in the possible neural mechanisms that are involved in these processes [13–17]. Indeed, individuals with a growth mindset tend to recover from setbacks easier than individuals with a fixed mindset, and neural activity concerning automatic reactions to errors seems to be involved in this ability to rebound from mistakes (for review, see [18]). Although, thus far the neuroscientific research related to mindsets is still rather scarce, especially concerning studies conducted on children. We found only two studies connecting neuroscience and the theory of mindsets, which have focused on children [15, 17].

Most of the neuroscientific studies on mindsets have examined the connections between mindsets and electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, more specifically the connections between mindsets and event-related potentials (ERPs) [13, 14, 16, 17]. Mangels and colleagues [13] had the participants of the study answer general knowledge questions and used EEG recordings to measure their neural responses to the feedback for the questions. In other studies [14, 16, 17], the researchers used a go/no-go or Flanker's task and measured the participants' neural responses to errors. All of these studies showed differences in the neural mechanisms, more specifically in the ERPs, of fixed and growth mindset participants, which might reflect differences in the processing of errors and feedback between fixed- and growth-minded participants. More specifically, researchers [14, 17] have found growth mindset to be related to an enhanced amplitude of the error-related positivity (Pe) component of ERPs, with no differences in the amplitude of error-related negativity (ERN). In study [13], growth and fixed mindset participants differentiated in the anterior frontal P3 to negative performance-relevant feedback, which might refer to negative feedback having a stronger affective effect in the case of a fixed mindset. In study [16] P3 amplitude was larger, and late Pe amplitude was smaller in participants with an induced growth mindset when compared to the participants with an induced fixed mindset. In addition to the studies using EEG recordings, there are two studies that have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the neural mechanisms connected to mindsets [15, 19].

At the same time, even though these neural differences between growth and fixed mindset have been shown to be present among undergraduates and children *Mindsets and Failures: Neural Differences in Reactions to Mistakes among Second-Grade Finnish… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85421*

**Figure 1.**

*Visual representation of the research design.*

in North America, we found only one neuroscientific study on mindsets that has addressed different cultural contexts [19]. This study focused on mindsets about emotion regulation and not about intelligence. Still, results from that study and other previous raise questions about the cultural dependency and context of mindsets and their relations and, thus, point to the need for research on mindsets also in different cultural contexts [7, 20, 21]. This discussion illustrates the importance of investigating mindsets and their neural mechanisms also in different cultural contexts.

Taking into account the previous discussion and the stated importance of connecting psychological, educational, and neuroscientific research when studying mindsets [18], the purpose of our pilot study was to examine and evaluate the neural differences of attention allocation to mistakes between growth and fixed mindset girls in the Finnish elementary school context. Relying on the previous research in this field, we expected to detect differences in the error-monitoring ERPs of growth and fixed mindset participants. For this ERN and Pe were recorded. ERN has been associated with immediate, perhaps unconscious, error-correction or simply conflict-detection processes [22, 23]. Pe has been associated with conscious error awareness, attention allocation to errors [22], and conscious processing of motivationally significant events [24]. It has been suggested that Pe possibly reflects a subjective emotional error assessment process, which could be modulated by the individual significance of the error [23, 25]. As can be seen in **Figure 1**, at the psychological level, we assume that several processes take place, related to perceiving the task, making decision about the response, performing the action, detecting whether the action was right or wrong, and, finally, in the case of an error, evaluating the error and its consequences. At the level of the neural signals or ERPs, we can measure responses related to visual perception and action preparation (not reported in this study due to the averaging according to button press), the Pe response and the ERN response. These responses depend on the task (go trial or no-go trial), the action (button pressed or not pressed), and the correctness of the button press and are expected to also depend on the mindset of the participant.
