Drawing on Self and Reward Perspectives to Understand the Benefits of Choice

• In Event: 25.024 - Synergies in Studies of Motivation and Learning: An Interactive Workshop

Abstract

The dominant psychological perspective on the role of choice in motivation and learning emphasizes that choice has benefits to the extent that it is a tool for experiencing autonomy, control, competence, and triggering interest. With this in mind, providing choice has been identified as an effective intervention for promoting motivation and performance in educational settings. Despite its potential as a motivational tool, the role of choice in motivation and learning is surprisingly complex. When considered together, motivational, cognitive, social, and neuroscientific perspectives provide a multifaceted picture of the role of choice provision in motivation and learning. Chapter 10 of the handbook describe these perspectives on choice.

However, greater integration across various perspectives, some explicitly related to choice and some only tangentially related, is needed to both create a comprehensive understanding of the function of choice in motivation and learning and leverage the benefits of choice in education interventions. In this interactive presentation, we focus on understanding how perspectives that emphasize the role of self-relevance, self-regulation, and a brain-based understanding of rewards in motivation and learning inform and parallel perspectives on the role of choice in motivation and learning.

For example, drawing on Chapter 1 of the handbook, we focus on evidence suggesting that self-related information processing produces benefits for attention, action, and memory mainly due to the fact that self-relevant processing is one fundamental component of the brain’s spontaneous activity. With this in mind, we explore how choice may often be a gateway to processing new information in relation to the self and how acknowledging the critical role that the self (and autonomy) plays in learning helps to better understand the nature of choice effects and potentially when it does and does not have benefits. Drawing on the self-regulatory perspective of motivation discussed in Chapter 4 of the handbook, we consider whether choice may have benefits for motivation and learning through self-regulatory processes. More specifically, we conceptually explore the idea that explicit and implicit choices within an activity may provide a mechanism for students to regulate ongoing interest and value across an activity and note the limited evidence in line with this notion. Finally, we draw on neuroscience perspectives of rewards in Chapter 6 and the discussion of successful motivation interventions that emphasize increasing value in Chapters 24 and 25 of the handbook to ponder the extent to which choices can be used to bolster a variety of education interventions. We note that choice is neurologically linked with reward structures and identified as a fundamental reward in the brain. Given these basic reward properties, we explore the extent to which choice can, should, and has been considered to understand the dynamics of education interventions not primarily focused on choice and used to bolster their effectiveness.

The key theme of the presentation is that diverse perspectives and disciplines can be used to better understand choice processes and mechanisms. Conversely, choice perspectives can be used to illuminate and enhance other education theory and products.

Author

• Erika Alisha Patall, University of Southern California