Understanding the origins, determinants, and consequences of children’s mastery motivation: A developmental approach

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Children’s mastery motivation plays an important role in their later academic and social adjustment (Duckworth & Gross., 2014). This symposium reflects new research on the development of children’s mastery motivation from infancy to school age. Further, the group of papers focus on the contexts predicting children’s mastery motivation, as well as its long-term prediction to later academic achievement.
In the first paper, the origins of toddlers’ mastery motivation are examined using an experimental design to understand the role of social input. Results indicated that toddlers consider the task difficulty as well as their own experiences when putting in effort on the task. The second study focuses on the development and predictors of children’s mastery motivation from 18 to 54 months old and showed the increase over time, particularly between 42 and 54 months and that maternal warmth and assertive control predicted the initial value, in some contexts, the slope of mastery motivation. Paper 3 demonstrated how prior mothers’ and fathers’ own achievement goal orientations jointly shaped preschoolers’ mastery motivation. Specifically, maternal mastery goals predicted children’s persistence and performance goals negative reactions to failures (particularly when paternal performance goals were low). Finally, in Study 4, preschoolers’ mastery motivation consistently predicted multiple aspects of children’s academic achievement 8 years later. Together, this symposium integrates studies from different countries (including the U.S., Hungary, and Taiwan) and offers novel insight into the development of children’s mastery motivation across a period characterized by extraordinary growth in the ability of children to persist on difficult tasks.

Sub Unit

• Social, Emotional, Personality

Chair

• Wen Wang, North Dakota State University

Individual Presentations

• Infants rationally decide when and how to deploy effort - Presenting Author: Kelsey Lucca, Arizona State University; Non-Presenting Author: Rachel Horton, University Of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Jessica A Sommerville, University of Toronto

• The development and prediction of young children’s mastery motivation - Presenting Author: Wen Wang, North Dakota State University; Non-Presenting Author: Tracy L Spinrad, Arizona State University; Non-Presenting Author: Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University

• Associations of parental mastery and performance goal orientations and preschoolers’ mastery motivation - Presenting Author: Keng-Ling Lay, National Taiwan University; Non-Presenting Author: Che Cheng, National Taiwan University; Non-Presenting Author: Su-Ying Huang, Fu Jen Catholic University

• The predictive role of mastery motivation in preschool on school achievement 8 years later - Presenting Author: Karen Caplovitz Barrett, Colorado State University; Non-Presenting Author: Krisztián Józsa, Colorado State University