Persistence in young children: Current issues and future directions

Abstract

Persistence in children is associated with various successes such as academic achievement and positive relationships with others. Despite the importance of children’s persistence, little comprehensive understanding exists on how persistence can be fostered. Whether the existing tasks and measures are appropriate for assessing persistence in children and which external and intrapersonal factors affect their persistence are ambiguous. In this paper, we aimed to review persistence in young children and discuss several problems to understand persistence deeply. First, we reviewed the tasks and measures used to assess children’s persistence. Second, we introduced recent studies investigating the external factors that influence persistence in infants and preschoolers. Third, we focused on intrapersonal factors related to persistence and discussed individual differences in these factors. Finally, we propose future directions of persistence research in consideration of these issues.