Motivational Orientation, Error Monitoring, and Academic Performance in Middle Childhood: A Behavioral and Electrophysiological Investigation

Abstract

ABSTRACT— Previous research suggests that academic motivation orientation relates to students’ causal interpretations about academic outcomes and their emotional reactions to those outcomes. The current study examines how student motivation may relate to certain neurophysiological systems that are thought to underlie the processing of successes and failures. In the cognitive neuroscience literature, the error‐related negativity (ERN) in the event‐related potential has been associated with error processing and the degree of an individual’s emotional investment in his or her performance. The current study examined the relation between academic motivational characteristics and ERN amplitude during a speeded reaction time task in 3rd‐ to 5th‐grade students (n = 17). Intrinsically oriented students displayed larger amplitude ERN responses and made more internally directed attributions about their task performance. The findings suggest that students with high intrinsic orientation attribute performance to personal control and that their error‐monitoring system is more strongly engaged by performance errors.

A critical eye: Praise directed toward traits increases children’s eye fixations on errors and decreases motivation

“…Performance goals, which include the belief that failure (or error) is a threat to self, are related to less task motivation (e.g., Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Both children and college students with performance goals demonstrated differences in attention from those with learning goals (Fisher et al, 2009;Mangels et al, 2006). As compared to children with learning goals, children with performance goals demonstrated greater error salience, overestimating the number of errors that they made (Diener & Dweck, 1980).…”

“…College students with learning goals (i.e., desire to increase knowledge or to master a task) demonstrated more effort toward integrating new information after failure and were more likely to redirect their attention to correct answers after feedback than were students with performance goals (desire to seek positive evaluations and avoid negative evaluations; Mangels, Butterfield, Lamb, Good, & Dweck, 2006). Fisher, Marshall, and Nanyakkara (2009) found that third-and fifth-grade children with learning goals were more concerned with fixing the error (i.e., more persistent) than were children with performance goals. These studies suggested that achievement goals influence implicit responses to failure; however, achievement goals were not experimentally manipulated.…”

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“…The topics approached were very diverse: the contribution of physiological activity (HPA and SNS) to children's behavioural regulation abilities expected to relate to classroom and home measures of self-regulation (Lisonbee et al, 2010); the satisfaction of basic psychological needs and its effects on emotional arousal (Streb et al, 2015); the impact of a mindfulness training on markers of attention and metacognition in adolescents (Sanger & Dorjee, 2016); the role of individual differences in neurocognitive and temperamental systems of self-regulation in early adolescents' social and academic competence (Checa et al, 2008), and the relation between academic motivational characteristics and certain neurophysiological systems that are thought to underlie the processing of successes and failures (Fisher et al, 2009). …”

“… Socio-demographic variables: age, gender, socioeconomic status of the family, minority status (Lisonbee et al, 2010), classroom group size.  Academic performance: grades and other similar measures (Fisher et al, 2009;Checa et al, 2008).…”

“…Nevertheless, the current studies represent attempts to explore how educationally relevant cognitive and motivational components may parallel neurophysiological reactions to performance outcomes in school settings. For instance, Fisher et al, 2009, set the stage for future research by testing the relation between academic motivational characteristics and specific neurophysiological systems that are believed to underlie successes and failures processing.…”