Why Grit And Conscientiousness Are Cognitive Skills—And Why It Matters
Ellen Galinsky, author of Minds In The Making, makes an important point about “non-cognitive skills”—the capacities like perseverance, conscientiousness, and “grit” that we’ve all been talking about thanks to Paul Tough’s new book, “How Children Succeed.” Actually, Galinsky points out, these skills are cognitive:
“These skills require intellect and are indeed cognitive skills as much as they’re social and emotional skills. If we don’t get the language right, we risk seeing the focus on skills end up as an education flavor of the month.
. . . All of these skills are based on executive functions of the brain. These are the brain functions we use to manage our attention, our emotions, and our behavior in pursuit of our goals. Adele Diamond, one of the foremost researchers on executive functions, finds that they predict children’s success as well as—if not better than—IQ tests, as she explains:
‘Typical traditional IQ tests measure what’s called crystallized intelligence, which is mostly your recall of what you’ve already learned–like what’s the meaning of this word, or what’s the capital of that country? What executive functions tap is your ability to use what you already know–to be creative with it, to problem-solve with it–so it’s very related to fluid intelligence, because that requires reasoning and using information.’” (Read more here.)
I love that distinction—it’s not just what you know but what you do with what you know that makes the difference.
But I wish Ellen had been more explicit about what we lose when we call these “non-cognitive skills.” Is it simply a question of accuracy? Or is she concerned that we’ll only value these skills over the long term if we view them as cognitive? Ellen, would love to hear your thoughts.
Hear, hear. That’s the one big problem I had with Paul Tough’s book, which I otherwise admired. I talked to Angela Duckworth about this, and noted that there are plenty of cognitive assessments that get at these abilities, like senior projects. She said she didn’t like the term “non-cognitive” either, and suggested “habits.” What do you think?
Interesting… maybe what we lose with the “NON-cognitive” label is something like this:
* if we think of cognition as a scarce resource, and we work on conserving, protecting, managing cognitive resources, then anything NOT labeled “cognitive” is not part of that protection, management, conservation, etc.
Baumeister’s work (and the infamous cake vs. fruit memory study) showed us that both self-control and cognition were drawing on the same pool of resources. By labeling things as NON cognitive, we put them outside that scarce resource pool. But if we think of it as IN the cognitive resource pool, then we can better design ways to help preserve those resources. Most basic example: people who have just used by cog resources on, say, tough problem-solving exercises can be expected to then show LESS “grit and conscientious”.
I think there is also a tendency to think of “cognitive” as something that can be changed through learning, whereas “non-cognitive” implies for many people something that is fixed and can’t be changed. So categorizing things as non-cognitive could lead people to believe they are things you just have to work around, not worth trying to develop, etc.
I am so grateful to you Annie for giving me the opportunity to comment on this topic. There are two reasons why I reject the notion of non-cognitive.
1. ACCURACY. While Paul Tough and I have a somewhat different list of characteristics/skills (for Tough, these includes grit, curiosity, perseverance, conscientiousness, self-regulation, and optimism; for me, they are focus and self control, perspective taking, communicating, making connections, critical thinking, taking on challenges, and self-directed engaged learning), there is a lot of overlap. For example: grit and perseverance are similar to taking on challenges; self regulation is similar to focus and self control; and curiosity is a part of self-directed, engaged learning.
So why do I say accuracy? There are three reasons. FIrst, all of the skills I find are important, based on many longitudinal studies, involve executive functions, including focus, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control. They take place in the prefrontal cortex in concert with other areas of the brain and bring together social, emotional, AND cognitive capacities. For example, “memory is at the center of the cognitive universe.” Second, think about what exercising these skills involves. Self control includes a cognitive appraisal about the goal the child is pursuing and the strategies that are best to achieve that goal. Take the famous marshmallow test as an example. The child has think about his or her strategy—whether it is better to wait for two marshmallows later, versus one now. And learning self control, involves cognitive flexibility—from seeing the marshmallow as delicious to seeing the marshmallow as perhaps a fluffy cloud. Third, these skills can be taught and they can be learned—a cognitive act! And that can happen in school.
Tough equates “the cognitive hypothesis” with stuffing knowledge down children’s throats. That is a gross misunderstanding of all that cognition involves.
2. IMPLICATIONS. In education, we tend to drop anything that doesn’t include cognition. Look at what is happening to arts and recess in the schools (despite the fact that there are studies that show that both positively affect learning). If we inaccurately label what he calls character as non-cognitive, they will be a flavor of the month my four decades in working in education tells me.
Interesting that Angela Duckworth now doesn’t like “non-cognitive.” I hear that Jim Heckman is not using this term today too.
I find that amazing response to Mind in the Making (MITM) by schools—not just three schools, but all over the country—a result of the fact that MITM is based on research and that MITM rightly doesn’t separate social-emotional from cognitive when it comes to the skills that are essential for children to thrive today and in the future.
As you can tell, Annie, I feel very, very strongly about this and really appreciate your giving me the opportunity to engage in this dialogue.