rachel kingstone

I'm Rachel Jordan Kingstone, a graduate student based in Toronto. I'm currently working on a Master's in Early Childhood Studies. I'm interested in how children and families cope with serious childhood illness, and how psychosocial (/non-medical) interventions can support resilience during and after diagnosis and treatment. My previous research focused on how persistence develops in early learning environments.

Previous research suggests that when children are praised for their effort, they try harder, generate better problem-solving strategies, and are able to cope with setbacks. Process praise that overlaps with effort and success boosts infants' motor-based persistence, while random process praise is detrimental to persistence. In my undergraduate thesis, I explored whether contingent process praise influences how infants reason about effort expenditure, and whether this mental effort correlates with infants’ physical persistence.

I'm also broadly interested in philosophy of science/history of psych kinds of things like: looping effects and categorical classification, experience-based expertise in survivorship research, the history of infant research and attachment theory, and the intersection of parenting, disability, and complex medical conditions.

Hello!