Children's mastery motivation and executive functions on the new FOCUS app

• In Event: 3-178 - Social, emotional & self-regulatory influences on children’s mastery strivings, from different countries & perspectives

Integrative Statement

Children’s enthusiasm, focus, persistence, flexibility, and motivation when tasks are challenging, frustrating, and/or time-consuming is crucial to school readiness (Bailey, et al., 2018; Kagan, et al., 1995; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). When manifested during goal-directed attempts to master challenging, frustrating, and/or time-consuming tasks, enthusiasm and persistence are central, definitional indicators of mastery motivation (MM; e.g., Barrett & Morgan, 2018; Morgan, Harmon, & Maslin-Cole, 1990). However, executive functions (EF)--cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control—also can influence these behaviors (U.S.D.H.H.S., 2015). Our FOCUS (Finding Out Children’s Unique Strengths) tablet app is a new child-friendly assessment of both MM and EF. MM and EF are different in important ways. MM involves children’s attitudes/approach toward challenge and learning; including feelings of autonomy, enthusiasm, and low avoidance emotions during mastery attempts (e.g., Barrett & Morgan, 1995, 2018; Ratelle et al., 2004). In contrast, EF are skills that can underlie focus. Interventions can increase both (e.g., Hashmi, et al., 2017; Diamond & Lee, 2011; Greenberg & Harris, 2012); however, those that affect MM and EF are different. It is therefore crucial to measure and distinguish MM and EF.
Preliminary evidence of reliability and validity of FOCUS, with 274 Hungarian children aged 3-7, revealed good alphas (average α =.73). There were linear increases in MM and guessing and a linear decrease in correct responses with difficulty level (each p < .01). There were significant linear increases in examiner-rated negative emotion and decreases in examiner-rated positive emotion with difficulty level (each p < .01). Additionally, children’s MM on FOCUS was significantly correlated with their teacher-reported MM (r = .25-.53), and there were significant correlations between MM indicators across different tasks (r = .48), and between MM and both number recognition (r = .53) and letter recognition (r =.44). Further, based on a small American sample, MM negatively predicted parentally reported distractibility, F1,16 = 5.23, p = .036.
Additional data from approximately 250 5-year-old Hungarian children revealed excellent reliabilities (α above .90) for EF tasks that required sorting on one consistent dimension (even after a dimension switch), but much lower alphas (α = .58) when children needed to sort each item based on sorting dimensions that changed across items. This suggests that, at age 5, they were not able to consistently switch to use the appropriate rule for each item. Item Response Theory analyses indicated that items within each level showed very similar difficulty, discrimination, and guessing parameters (using the 3PL model), and both difficulty and guessing tended to increase from one difficulty level to the next. Interestingly, the correlation between MM and EF on the same EF task was close to zero, r(281)=.004. In contrast, the correlations between EF and letter and number recognition were r(281)=.14 and .35 (p=.02 and .01), respectively, and those between MM and letter and number recognition were r(281)=.20 and .30 respectively (p≤ .01). Thus, when EF was distinguished from MM, both were significantly correlated with pre-academic skills. Implications and future directions will be discussed.

Authors

• Karen Barrett, Colorado State University
  Presenting Author

• Krisztián Józsa, University of Szeged
  Non-Presenting Author

• George Morgan, Colorado State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alyssa Gibbons, Colorado State University
  Non-Presenting Author