“I am sure you’ll succeed”: When a teacher’s verbal encouragement of success increases children’s academic performance

Research has reported the positive effect of verbal encouragement/reinforcement on participants’ performance. However, most of the time, verbal encouragement/reinforcement was given several times during the task, and the encouragement used was often a personal trait (“You’re good, “you’re clever”, etc.). In the first study, 3–5 year-old children were asked to find an image which was not included in a group of images that had been presented...