Evaluating the Remembered Success Effect With Elementary and Middle School Students

• In Event: Broadening the Terrain: Examining Novel Motivational Processes in STEM Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
The remembered success effect refers to individuals’ preferences for challenging academic tasks that start or end with extra opportunities for success over tasks that do not (Finn & Miele, 2016). The effect has been repeatedly demonstrated with adults, but its emergence during childhood has not been examined. In the present study, we investigated whether mathematics tasks designed to provide extra success opportunities impacted third- and sixth-grade students’ affective memories of these experiences, as well as their preferences for engaging in similar tasks moving forward. Our hypotheses were:
(1) Third- and sixth-grade students would prefer an extended challenging math experience to a shorter one if it included the opportunity to be successful.
(2) Primacy and recency effects in memory may lead to preferences for extended tasks that include easier math problems at the beginning or end, but not extended tasks that include easier problems in the middle.
(3) Developmental differences in memory and motivation may lead third- and sixth-grade students to respond differently to remembered success manipulations.

Methods
Participants were 560 Mid-Atlantic public school students (281 Grade 3, 279 Grade 6) in two urban school districts (Table 4.1). Students completed the task as part of their normal school day math lesson. Math task materials were grade-appropriate difficult and easier math problems. The students each completed two math tasks: a shorter task with 10 difficult math problems and an extended task with 10 difficult problems and 5 additional easier problems presented either at the beginning (Easier Start), the middle (Easier Middle) or the end (Easier End) of the task (students were randomly assigned to conditions within classrooms). After each task, the students completed an expectancy-value questionnaire (16 items), which was adapted from Wigfield & Eccles (2000). Upon completing both tasks, they provided task preference ratings (5 items).

Results
Task preferences. Both third- and sixth-grade students demonstrated remembered success effects, though the effects were more robust for sixth-graders (Table 4.2). When deciding which type of task they would prefer to complete next (i.e., their ‘Next Task’ preference), sixth-graders demonstrated the remembered success effect across all conditions (i.e., preferred the extended task over the shorter task), whereas third-graders demonstrated remembered success primarily in the Extended End condition. This pattern may be explained by sixth-graders’ superior task event memory (Ghetti & Bunge, 2012).
Expectancies and task values. Expectancy and value ratings predicted Next Task preference. As children’s expectancy and value ratings increased for the extended task (and decreased for the short task), the probability of preferring the extended task also increased, with sixth-graders showing a stronger preference across all ratings levels.

Significance
Both third- and sixth-graders demonstrated remembered success effects, and the results have both theoretical and practical/instructional implications. Regarding theory, the results provide support for the links between affective memories and both expectancies for success and task value proposed in Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value model. Regarding instruction, the findings suggest that incorporating success experiences into difficult problem sets may be an efficient way to maintain positive motivational beliefs and values.

Authors

• Bridgid Finn, Educational Testing Service

• David B. Miele, Boston College

• Allan L. Wigfield, University of Maryland - College Park