Motivation During an Excessively Challenging Reading Task: The Buffering Role of Relative Topic Interest

Interest-based text preference moderates the effect of text difficulty on engagement and learning

“…For example, higher topic interest in a text is related to higher enjoyment and greater persistence during excessively difficult texts among middle school students (Fulmer & Frijters, 2011). These findings prompted the hypothesis for the current study that interest-based text preference may moderate the effects of text difficulty on engagement and learning while reading instructional texts.…”

“…In particular, if the advantage of interest-based text preference during learning is that it only helps the learner to manage the potential negative influence of difficulty (Renninger, Ewen, & Lasher, 2002), then engagement and learning will be equivalent for preferred, easy texts and preferred, difficult texts. However, if there is an added advantage of interest-based text preference for engagement and learning (Fulmer & Frijters, 2011), such that it inspires greater attention, concentration, and deeper processing, we expect that participants will report higher engagement and demonstrate greater learning for difficult texts, compared with easy texts. Based on our operationalization of engagement, this higher engagement will be reflected in more positive-activating affect (positive valence and moderate arousal), less mind wandering, and greater reading time for the difficult compared with the easy texts.…”

“…Participants were shown the titles of four texts and were asked to rank the texts based on their interest in each title (similar to Flowerday, Schraw, & Stevens, 2004;Fulmer & Frijters, 2011). The two highest ranked titles were considered preferred texts, whereas the remaining two titles were the non-preferred texts.…”

When Easy Becomes Boring and Difficult Becomes Frustrating: Disentangling the Effects of Item Difficulty Level and Person Proficiency on Learning and Motivation

“…In sum, for maximizing the motivation of learners, tasks should still provide an intermediate probability of success, rather than offering an almost certain probability of success (i.e., the probability of correctly answering an item is always close to 1) or failure (i.e., the probability of correctly answering an item is always close to 0 [29,35,36]. In other words, research is needed to find the optimal probability to answer an item correct (i.e., π pi in Equation (1)) in order to keep the learner engaged.…”

“…Furthermore, overly challenging or difficult tasks can be perceived as a threat to the learner's sense of competence, resulting in lower self-efficacy [26]. The learner's interest in the learning material may buffer the negative effects of overly challenging tasks on motivation [29]. Interest is composed of both intrinsic motivation [30] and task value/task motivation [31].…”