Growth mindset promotes children’s working memory performance through cortico-striatal interaction and fronto-parietal activation

Children with growth mindset tend to believe that personal abilities and traits are improvable through continuous efforts. This belief boosts intrinsic motivation and benefits cognitive abilities in children, in the long term resulting in improved academic performance. However, little is known regarding its neurocognitive mechanisms in the processing of cognitive tasks. Using functional brain imaging and an n-back task in school-aged children (ages 8-12), we demonstrated that growth mindset promotes working memory performance through enhanced response in the fronto-parietal network, salience network, and caudate nucleus. While growth mindset predicted lower connectivity between caudate and insula irrespective of memory load, the connectivity between caudate and posterior cingulate cortex was selectively correlated with growth mindset in the high load condition. The cortico-striatal connectivity together with cortical response played a key mediatory role in the promotion effect of growth mindset towards working memory. Our findings suggest a neurocognitive mechanism accounts for how growth mindset promotes children’s working memory in demanding tasks via modulation of motivational neural systems and information processing. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.