Mistakes are Essential to Learning

Frederique Autin, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France conducted a study which was published online in APA’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In three separate experiments involving over 100 French sixth graders, one group was told that learning is difficult and failure is common, but practice will help, just like learning how to ride a bicycle. The other test groups, did not receive this message.

In each of the three tests, the children who were told that learning is difficult scored higher than the other groups.

Read the complete article in ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2012).

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