Cimorene

But I think the idea is that praise based ON effort, and not on results, is more effective. That would require that the adults FIRST observed accurately how hard you had to work, but you know, it's not like they can't tell, especially when you're small.

Agreed! But in a school setting, that is often NOT the case (especially with things like assigned papers), and it definitely wasn't the case in the research discussed in that article, which involved giving kids a task they could all complete, and then randomly assigning whether they would be praised for their intelligence ("You must be smart at this") or their effort ("You must have worked really hard").

Mistaken praise thinking I'd tried when I hadn't just engendered contempt for the praiser

Ahh, I more often did the opposite. I assumed that if something required effort to be done well, and I hadn't put in any effort, it therefore could not be of any quality; and any subsequent praise for it was somehow mistaken, and that mistake would one day be discovered. So basically textbook Imposter Syndrome.