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ERI Talk – Madalin Deliu: “Motivational beliefs and reading skills: What role does growth mindset play in literacy challenges?”

  • June 2nd, 2025
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June 6, 2025 – 1:00 p.m. On-site and online session (Room M204, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy). Language: Spanish.

Motivational beliefs and reading skills: What role does growth mindset play in literacy challenges?

Madalin Deliu

University of Salamanca

 

Literacy is key to individual and social development, but also a complex process that requires overcoming cognitive and socioemotional challenges. In my doctoral thesis, I adopt the cumulative challenges approach (Sánchez & García, 2021) to study how beliefs about the ability to learn—specifically, growth mindset—can influence reading development. I have focused on four progressive challenges: (1) decoding, (2) fluent comprehension, (3) learning from simple texts, and (4) solving tasks using multiple texts. In this presentation I will talk about the three studies that make up my thesis: (1) a meta-analysis showing positive, though moderate, associations between growth mindset and reading-related variables such as motivation, self-regulation, and performance; (2) a longitudinal study revealing bidirectional relationships between mindset and reading performance during the transition to secondary education; and (3) an experiment indicating positive effects of a brief intervention on self-efficacy and self-regulation, with limited effects on performance. Taken together, the results suggest that growth mindset is a relevant factor, although not sufficient on its own. I will discuss its role as part of a cognitive meaning-making system and its potential cascading effect on reading development.

 

Bio

I am a predoctoral researcher in the PhD program “Reading and Comprehension”, where I study the role of motivational variables such as growth mindset in reading. I am interested in the psychological processes involved in learning, with a special emphasis on self-regulated learning and on socioemotional and motivational factors. I have collaborated on national projects on reading comprehension, undertaken international research stays, and participated in multidisciplinary networks focused on knowledge transfer. I particularly enjoy learning about statistical analyses.