The Impact of Remembered Success Experiences on Children’s Cost Perceptions in the Math Domain

• In Event: Using the Concept of Perceived Cost to Bridge Cognitive and Motivational Theories of Student Learning

Abstract

Purpose and Framework: Research from the judgment and decision-making (JDM) literature has shown that, when making decisions about which activities to repeat, people tend to form biased evaluation of their past experiences. Specifically, Kahneman (2000) showed that, when evaluating past experiences, people tend to weight the pleasure/pain associated with key moments (e.g., the ending) more heavily than the pleasure/pain associated with other moments. Finn and colleagues (e.g., Finn & Miele, 2016, 2021) have extended this work to educational contexts. For instance, they showed that third and sixth graders preferred a challenging math task that included 10 difficult math problems but started or ended with 5 easier problems (which provide students with extra opportunities for success), to a task that only included 10 difficult problems (i.e., the remembered success effect; Finn, 2010; Finn et al., 2023, 2024).
Researchers have tended to explain this effect and similar phenomena in terms of concepts/theories from the JDM and cognitive psychology literatures, such as duration neglect and serial position effects (see Alaybek et al., 2022). Recently, Finn and colleagues integrated these concepts with motivational constructs by showing that the remembered success effects can partly be explained in terms of changes in individuals’ task-specific expectancies, values, and perceived costs (Finn et al., 2023, 2024). However, what is not known at this point is whether experiences of remembered success can also impact these constructs when they are more broadly assessed (e.g., in terms an entire content domain, such as math). We address this question with a particular focus on participants’ perceptions of math-related costs.

Method: The final sample include 1,803 students in Grades 3, 6, and 9 (46% female; 4.5% NA). Students were randomly assigned to a number of conditions, some of which were designed to test research questions not addressed here. Two of the conditions reflect the basic remembered success effect demonstrated in previous studies (Finn et al., 2024). In the short condition, students completed 10 difficult math problems (all the same type). In the extended condition, students completed the same 10 problems, as well as 5 easier problems at the end of the task. After completing the task and a filler activity, they completed task-specific and domain-general measures of their expectancies, values, and costs (see Tables 1, 2).

Results and Significance: We examined participants responses with a series of linear mixed-effect models that included non-orthogonal user defined contrasts. Aligned with Finn et al. (2024), the results showed that students in the extended condition reported higher task-specific expectancies and lower task-specific costs than students in the short condition (though there was no difference for task-specific value; see Tables 3a, 4a). Interestingly, the only construct for which the remembered success manipulation had a domain-general impact was perceived costs (see Tables 3b, 4b). This finding, which was not moderated by grade, has important implications for educational practice, as teachers may be able to prevent their students from perceiving math as too taxing by adding opportunities for remembered success to assigned tasks (rather than making the task less challenging).

Authors

• Burcu Arslan, Educational Testing Service Global

• David B. Miele, Boston College

• Bridgid Finn, Fidelity Investments

• Allan L. Wigfield, University of Maryland