Of course it can. What does an intelligent kid do? Find the easiest way to do a task or question whether the task is necessary at all. That's just humans conse

Of course it can. What does an intelligent kid do? Find the easiest way to do a task or question whether the task is necessary at all. That's just humans conserving energy. Which is smart. This is not the hard part for them, they excel at this. Effort is consciously fighting against the drive to stop working. THIS is the hard part. Above average children never have to learn this, because they get through school and life that easy. It's only when they are forced to leave their comfort zone, when problems show up. Intelligent Children who aren't kept or lead out of this effort-avoidance (which is a kind of motivation as well: the motivation to avoid effort in order to conserve energy) also tend to get worse grades after they got good ones. Because praising them signals them that they actually overachieved and can therefore put even less energy into accomplishing a task. So the way to go is praising them for doing something that they didn't want to do or for repeating effort.