Maternal Achievement-Oriented Conditional Regard with Toddlers Longitudinally Predicts Preschoolers' Poor Mastery Motivation

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

Integrative Statement

This Israeli study focuses on the potential effects of mothers' early use of the practice of achievement-oriented parental conditional regard (PCR): Providing more affection when their child is successful or works hard at learning new knowledge and skills and less affection when they don’t (Assor el al., 2004). Past studies have shown that achievement-oriented PCR is associated with non-optimal and stressful coping with challenges. However, these studies used concurrent designs and none was conducted in the first years of life. In an attempt to address these limitations, we conducted a longitudinal study examining early maternal achievement-oriented PCR with toddlers as a predictor of poor mastery motivation in preschoolers.
The study included two waves. First, 104 mothers of 18 month-old toddlers reported on their use of achievement-oriented PCR. Then, when children were 54 months-old, they were administered a puzzle task including one solvable puzzle, then three unsolvable puzzles, and then again a solvable puzzle. Additionally, 54 mothers completed at home scales assessing their child's negative reactions to failure and mastery-oriented coping with challenge (Morgan et al., 2007).
Children’s behavior when working on the puzzles was video-taped, and then coded for behavioral and emotional indicators of poor mastery. Behavioral indicators included taking long breaks, repetitive placement of pieces, engaging with objects unrelated to task, and asking to stop working. Emotional indicators included facial sadness expressions, sighs, dropping shoulders, leaning heavily on table, nervous movements, and slamming puzzle-pieces on table. Inter-judge Kappa coefficients were above .75. Factor-analysis showed that the behavioral and emotional indicators loaded on distinct factors. Therefore, the various indicators were summed up to create two composite indicators of poor-mastery: emotional and behavioral.
Scores on the two composite-indicators were significantly higher on the unsolvable puzzles compared to the solvable puzzles, thus supporting their validity. Mothers' rating of children as high on mastery-oriented coping with challenge tended to be negatively correlated with the two task-based indicators of poor mastery, whereas the reverse was true for children's rating on negative reactions to failure. Given the low correlations between the task and maternal-report measures, we analyzed these measures separately.
Based on median splits on the behavioral and emotional task-based scores, we created three groups: helpless (low scores on both indicators), mastery oriented (high scores on both indicators), and a medium group (inconsistent scores). A similar procedure was used to create three groups based on mother-reports.
ANOVAs conducted separately on the task-based and mother-based classifications showed that, in both cases, the group classified as helpless-oriented had significantly higher scores than the groups classified as mastery-oriented on maternal achievement-oriented PCR when children were 18 months-old (F(1,101)=3.97, p<.05 for task-based classification, and F(1,51)=5.66, p<.001 for mother-report classification). Also as expected, for both classifications, the medium group had maternal PCR levels that were higher than those of the helpless group, and lower than those of the mastery group.
The findings suggest that mothers' use of achievement-oriented PCR with toddlers may be regarded as an early risk factor that may merit special attention in early intervention and parent-guidance programs.

Authors

• Avi Assor, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israe
  Presenting Author

• Ortal Bhoknik Atzil, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
  Non-Presenting Author

• Noa Herschkovitz, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lotem Oz, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
  Non-Presenting Author

• Judy Auerbach, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yaniv Kanat-Maymon, Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patricia A Smiley, Pomona Colege
  Non-Presenting Author