Mastery Motivation in Early Childhood

Development, Measurement and Social Processes

David J. Messer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781134840304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

All children possess a motive to 'master' the various tasks and problems that they face. Without mastery motivation, it is doubtful whether children would make progress in cognitive, social communicative and other domains. Although all children possess this motivation, it will vary according to inherited dispositions and to environmental experiences. This makes mastery motivation a key factor in understanding later developmental and educational achievement.

Concentrating on pre-school children, this volume, originally published in 1993, brought together current research work and thinking concerned with mastery motivation at the time. New ideas are presented about the way mastery is related to other developmental processes such as self-concepts and attention. There are discussions and findings about innovations in the methods of assessing mastery. Another important theme present in this volume, is the way in which features of social interaction, attachment and the environment influence the development of mastery motivation.

With a broad range of international contributors, this title will still be of interest to developmental psychologists and educationalists, and advance students in these fields.

1 Mastery motivation An introduction to theories and issues

David J. Messer

DOI: 10.4324/9781315544250-1

Motivation to achieve and to improve skills is an important characteristic of our and other species. One can think of many vignettes of young organisms struggling to master problems: the young fledgling flapping its wings, jumping and hopping in its attempts to start to fly; the baby pulling herself or himself up on to chairs in the first attempts to start to walk, or the concentration and sometimes frustration of the toddler attempting to solve a puzzle. In all cases there is a strong motive directing behaviour, and the motive is not related to any immediate physical reward. Instead, the mastery of the task appears to be a reward in itself. The fascination of this type of behaviour provides the basis for the present volume.

The first section of this chapter provides an historical perspective about the growth of interest in mastery motivation. The classic papers by White, Hunt, Harter and others are outlined and discussed; differences between the formulations are highlighted. The second section considers more recent advances in the study of mastery motivation which are considered in the contributions to this volume.

The Growth of Interest in Mastery Motivation

A number of terms have been used to refer to children’s motivation to achieve objectives: mastery motivation, intrinsic motivation, competence motivation and, with older children, achievement motivation. These terms sometimes have been used interchangeably, but different perspectives can be identified within the literature. For this reason I will describe the ways in which these terms have been employed and consider distinctions between them. In doing so, I will outline the theories of White, Hunt, Harter and Yarrow. Particular attention is paid to four issues: the conceptualizations of the goal-directed nature of motivation, the description of the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation, the relationship between motivation and cognition, and the types of behaviour influenced by motivation.

White's effectance and competence motivation

White (1959, 1963) used the terms ‘effectance’ and ‘competence motivation’. ‘Effectance’ referred to a disposition of children to act on their environment, and the satisfaction associated with effectance was seen as the result of a ‘primitive biological endowment’ (White 1963: 35). ‘Competence motivation’ referred to children’s motivation to master tasks, increase knowledge and perfect skills, or, as White expressed it, ‘an organism’s capacity to interact effectively with the environment’ (White 1959: 297). Competence motivation was considered to be directed, selective and persistent. White believed that it resulted in satisfaction if there was a series of transactions which ‘change[d] one’s relation to the environment’.

White did not believe that it was useful to attempt to identify either the most important motive of an activity or the specific goal of this motive. He argued against dividing competence motivation into categories such as curiosity, manipulation or mastery because, he suggested, all these behaviours contained similar properties (although there is some inconsistency in this position, as he also proposed that, with age, effectance motivation becomes more differentiated). For similar reasons, he rejected the idea of distinguishing between behaviours according to their goals, such as the need for activity, the acquisition of knowledge, or the acquisition of mastery. White’s ideas were developed further in subsequent articles; his later view was that effectance motivation and feelings of efficacy were related to single transactions with the environment, while competence and a sense of competence were the result of a series of successful transactions (White 1963).

White drew attention to the relevance of motivation to development, and indicated that some motives did not involve drive reduction. However, he did not provide a clear definition of his constructs. At his most specific he proposed that competence motivation could be inferred from behaviour that shows ‘lasting localization and that has the characteristics of exploration and experimentation’ (White 1959: 323). White’s conception of motivation was broadly based. Goal-directed behaviour was seen in general terms, the motive force being regarded as intrinsic rather than extrinsic. He also believed that these motive forces increased children’s skills and abilities, and that it is a component of many child activities.

Hunt's cognitive-motivational perspective

Hunt (1965) was also interested in the relevance of motivation to our understanding of development. He provided a synthesis between the theories of Piaget and those of cognitive psychology by suggesting that motivated behaviour is initiated by incongruity with a standard. This could be a physiological standard as in the case of hunger and thirst, or a psychological standard as in the case of cognitive schemata. His distinction between intrinsic and other forms of motivation focused on whether motivation was a result of factors external or internal to the information-processing system; thus, intrinsic motivation was believed to be the result of cognitive processes and not physiological deficits. In Hunt’s words, ‘an optimal standard of incongruity supplies a motivation for behaviour change and learning that is inherent within the organism’s information interaction with its circumstances’ (1965: 227). It was also supposed that, because the relationship between motivation and incongruity was curvilinear, the highest degree of motivation would be elicited by an optimal degree of incongruity.

Hunt drew together different ideas to formulate proposals about the way intrinsic motivation develops during infancy. For the first five or six months he supposed that when a stimulus changes, attention is directed to the new event. Thus, young infants’ standards of reference are extrinsic rather than intrinsic. In the second phase, infants make some progress to an intrinsic standard in the sense that they become motivated to maintain perceptual contact with stimuli or events which are recognized. A cognitive transformation is supposed to bring about the third phase, the result being a motivation to capture novel stimuli rather than recapture familiar ones. During this phase, motivation becomes influenced by the degree of incongruity between an internal standard and the external stimulus.

Thus, Hunt supposed that motivation is generated by homeostatic mechanisms, and that a motivation to investigate and find out is based on incongruity. Furthermore, Hunt’s ideas suggest that resolution of incongruity will lead to a change in existing cognitive structures. In contrast to White’s view that effectance motivation is a unidirectional force for competence, Hunt saw competence as being a product of cognitive processes. However, Hunt shared White’s perspective in seeing intrinsic motivation as a basic process which could be expressed in a variety of behavioural forms.

Ulvund (1980) has discussed the relation between cognition and motivation in a way similar to Hunt. Ulvund also suggests that measures of competence reflect both cognitive and motivational processes and that ‘cognition and motivation are two closely intertwined processes, and in early infancy they can probably not be identified as two separate processes in operation’ (1980: 26). Furthermore, he suggests that development will be facilitated by a highly variable environment, which will increase the probability of infants encountering stimulation that is optimally discrepant with their cognitive schema.

Learning and motivational processes

A number of perspectives have considered motivation to be a product of learning (see also Heckhausen, this volume, chapter 4). Papoušek (1969) has reported that young infants will act in a way that produces effects on their environment even though there may be no reward except a successful outcome. Watson (1966, 1972) claimed that infants’ recognition of the relation between their actions and some contingent response elicits pleasure. Watson also proposed that experience of such contingencies results in ‘contingency awareness’, which may increase motivation and facilitate learning in other circumstances. Karniol (1989) has emphasized that feedback must be seen in relation to infants’ capacities. In particular, she proposes that changes in manipulative skills will, through feedback and contingency, also produce changes in the infant’s awareness of his or her capacities.

A different emphasis has come from Lewis and Goldberg, who consider contingencies in mother-infant social interaction (Goldberg 1975; Lewis and Goldberg 1969). They hypothesized that when infants learn contingencies between their actions and some response, they are not simply learning a specific relationship, but are also learning that they can affect their environment. Lewis and Goldberg have suggested that learning, or a failure to learn, this relationship can influence cognitive development in two ways. First, learning the effect of their actions could increase infants’ exploration and investigation, which in turn alters infants’ experiences. Second, there may be a change in the way infants process sensory information, because they are aware of the possibility that their actions have an effect on the environment.

Some support for the idea that motivation is influenced by learning comes from intervention programmes. Tutoring families to foster children’s feelings of mastery has been found to improve performance on a learning task (Ramey et al. 1975). Thus, the suggestion coming out of learning theories is that discovering the effectiveness of one’s own actions may lead to a general motive that results in higher levels of investigation and of processing information, which in turn may lead to cognitive development.

Harter's model of motivation

Harter has employed the terms ‘effectance motivation’, ‘intrinsic motivation’ and ‘mastery motivation’ when discussing children’s behaviour. ‘Mastery motivation’ is considered by her to be in part a product of social learning, and is defined as a ‘desire to solve cognitively challenging problems for the gratification inherent in discovering the solution’ (Harter 1975: 370). Behaviours which are claimed to exhibit this include curiosity, preference for challenge, internal criteria for success, and working for one’s own satisfaction.

In later articles, Harter (1978, 1981) proposes a model in which effectance motivation leads to mastery attempts and in which different components of effectance motivation are identified: cognitive, interpersonal and motor competencies. It is suggested that effectance motivation has two sources, an instinctive desire to have an effect, and an acquired motivational drive. The latter is hypothesized to become internalized during development so that motivation is less dependent on the praise and encouragement of others. This is more in accord with traditional learning theory than White’s and Hunt’s formulations.

The internalization provides self-praise for a child’s own attempts and successes, as well as providing mastery goals for which the child has been rewarded or punished. A lack of praise for independent attempts and for success is believed to result in some children failing to internalize appropriate motives, and as a result their continuing to be dependent on extrinsic sources of motivation. Harter, unlike White or Hunt, has emphasized the acquired nature of mastery motivation, and the way in which the development of motivation may be either fostered or inhibited. Unlike the previous learning theorists, Harter has emphasized the social basis of mastery motivation. In so doing she has provided one of the most comprehensive models of mastery motivation. In particular, she has drawn attention to the different components of effectance motivation and has identified a variety of behaviours that can be examined as indices of this motivation.

The mastery motivation of Leon Yarrow

Yarrow’s interest in mastery motivation culminated in two longitudinal studies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and can perhaps be traced back to a study of his own (Yarrow et al. 1975) which revealed that restrictive home environments were associated with poorer cognitive outcomes. Yarrow sought to explain this relation, not by simple stimulus availability, but by the motivational opportunities provided in an infant’s environment. He used White as a source of theoretical direction and, with his colleagues, developed methods to assess motivational processes.

Mastery motivation was operationally defined by Yarrow and his colleagues to refer to a motive which leads infants to ‘explore and play with objects about them’ (Jennings et al. 1979: 386). Gaiter et al. (1982) used persistence in mastery tasks as a major index of mastery motivation; this was defined as the proportion of time spent in task-directed activities. Jennings et al. (1979) coded both exploration and persistence in tasks as assessments of mastery motivation. In these studies, three components of persistence were investigated by using three corresponding sets of tasks which elicited different behaviours: those that produced immediate perceptual feedback, those that involved practising emerging skills, and those that concerned problem solving (Jennings et al. 1979).

A second study produced further developments in methodology. Yarrow et al. (1983) examined behaviour in relation to these three sets of tasks or components. The following behaviours were recorded: latency to task involvement; off-task behaviour; visual attention without manipulation of the task; exploration and persistence. In this study, exploration and persistence were seen as the most ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Mastery motivation: an introduction to theories and issues
• Part I Developmental processes
• Part II Conceptualization and measurement
• Part III Attachment and social processes
• Name Index
• Subject Index