Mastery Motivation in Early Childhood: Development
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Mastery motivation in early childhood 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, the volume brings together current research work and thinking concerned with mastery motivation. 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, Mastery Motivation in Early Childhood will be of interest to developmental psychologists and educationalists, and advanced students in these fields. David Messer is Reader in Developmental Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. International Library of Psychology Editorial adviser, Developmental psychology. Peter K.Smith University of Sheffield Neo-Piagetian Theories of Cognitive Development Edited by Andreas Demetriou, Michael Shayer and Anastasia Efklides New Perspectives in Early Communicative Development Edited by Jacqueline Nadel and Luigia Camaioni Classroom Nonverbal Communication Sean Neill Mastery motivation in early childhood Development, measurement and social processes Edited by David Messer London and New York First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1993 Selection and editorial matter, David Messer; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-41561-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-72385-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-06956-4 (Print Edition) Contents List of illustrations vii Notes on contributors x 1 Mastery motivation: an introduction to theories and issues 1 David J.Messer Part I Developmental processes 2 Mastery, attention, IQ and parent-infant social interaction 19 David J.Messer 3 Mastery motivation and the formation of self-concept from infancy through early childhood 36 Kay Donahue Jennings 4 The development of mastery and its perception within caretaker-child dyads 55 Jutta Heckhausen Part II Conceptualization and measurement 5 Three studies on the development of mastery motivation in infancy and toddlerhood 83 Karen Caplovitz Barren, George A.Morgan and Christine Maslin-Cole 6 Parent and teacher perceptions of young children’s mastery motivation: assessment and review of research 109 George A.Morgan, Christine Maslin-Cole, Robert J.Harmon, Nancy A.Busch-Rossnagel, Kay D.Jennings, Penny Hauser- Cram and Lois Brockman 7 Mastery motivation in ethnic minority groups: the sample case of Hispanics 132 Nancy A.Busch-Rossnagel, Maribel Vargas, Diana E.Knauf and Ruth Planos v vi Contents 8 Social and motivational development in deaf and hearing infants 149 Robert H.MacTurk 9 The construct validity of measures of social mastery motivation 168 Terri T.Coombs and Theodore D.Wachs Part III Attachment and social processes 10 Mastery motivation in toddlers as related to quality of attachment 189 J.Marianne Riksen-Walraven, Hans Th.Meij, Juchke van Roozendaal and Jeannette Koks 11 Toddler mastery motivation and competence: links with attachment security, maternal scaffolding and family climate 205 Christine Maslin-Cole, Inge Bretherton and George A.Morgan 12 Mastery motivation in 3-year-old children with Down Syndrome 230 Penny Hauser-Cram Name index 251 Subject index 255 Illustrations FIGURES 2.1 Proposals about the relation between infant attention, social interaction and ability 21 3.1 Model of mastery motivation and self-concept during infancy (3–18 months) and toddlerhood (after 18 months) 38 3.2 Time line of development of mastery motivation and self- concept during infancy and early childhood 49 4.1 Children’s task attempts: means of logarithmized rates per minute across ages (adapted from Heckhausen 1988) 62 4.2 Children’s performance in the sorter task: logarithmized rates (adapted from Heckhausen 1987a) 64 4.3 Mothers’ instruction in the sorter task: logarithmized rates (adapted from Heckhausen 1987a) 64 4.4 Mother’s choice-related instruction in the sorter task: logarithmized rates (adapted from Heckhausen 1987a) 65 4.5 Pattern of contingencies between maternal and infant behaviour predicted by the one-step-ahead model and the attainment-of-request model (adapted from Heckhausen 1987a) 66 4.6 Verbal and non-verbal modes of mothers’ instruction 67 4.7 Mothers’ reactions to children’s success: logarithmized rates (adapted from Heckhausen 1988) 69 5.1 Intercorrelations and stability of two measures of mastery motivation (task pleasure and persistence) and competence at 18 and 25 months 95 5.2 Number of intervals (out of sixteen) of task-directed behaviour (persistence) as a function of individualized difficulty level and age 102 5.3 Number of intervals (out of sixteen) of positive affect when solving or while working at a task (mastery pleasure) as a function of individualized difficulty level and age 103 vii viii Illustrations 7.1 Mean ages of children who met criteria for moderate difficulty at each level of task 136 11.1 Cross-age stability and intercorrelations of mastery motivation and competence factors at 18 and 25 months 216 TABLES 4.1 Categorization system used for behaviour of mother and child 61 4.2 Child’s persistence in task action 63 4.3 Number of child’s success reactions, and child’s and mother’s reactions to failure 68 4.4 Number of incidents of child’s and mother’s help-related behaviour 71 5.1 Correlations of 12-month child free play and maternal variety of play with 12- and 25-month mastery task measures 94 5.2 Correlations of mastery-task scores with contemporaneous clusters of infant behaviour ratings at 25 months 95 6.1 Characteristics of studies/samples utilizing the Mother’s Observation of Mastery Motivation (MOMM) or the Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ) 112 6.2 Alphas for the five rescored scales of the Dimension of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ-E) 117 6.3 Factor analyses of mother ratings of their 1–5-year-old on the DMQ (five-factor solution with five items deleted) 120 7.1 Mean persistence scores at first and second testing 138 7.2 Comparison of persistence scores to normative range 140 7.3 Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ) reliability data 143 7.4 Correlations between maternal DMQ ratings and maternal teaching behaviours and temperament ratings 144 8.1 Demographic characteristics: means and standard deviations by group 153 8.2 Tasks for assessing mastery motivation 154 8.3 Mastery motivation laboratory behaviour categories 155 8.4 Mastery motivation measures for deaf and hearing infants at 9 and 12 months: means, standard deviations and repeated measures MANOVA significance levels 158 8.5 Intercorrelations for the 9-month measures of mastery motivation and social smiles for the deaf and hearing infants 159 8.6 Intercorrelations for the 12-month measures of mastery motivation and social smiles for the deaf and hearing infants 160 8.7 Cross-age correlations for the hearing infants 161 8.8 Cross-age correlations for the deaf infants 162 9.1 Factor analysis of duration measures in structured and free-play situations 170 Illustrations ix 9.2 Mastery motivation codes 174 9.3 Means and standard deviations for observation duration and frequency codes 177 9.4 Correlations between social codes 178 9.5 Factor analysis of social mastery motivation codes 179 9.6 Factor analysis of social mastery, object mastery and related constructs 181 10.1 Rating scale for mastery motivation during exploration 195 10.2 Means and intercorrelations of mastery scores at 30 months for the whole sample, and separately for boys and girls 197 11.1 Means, standard deviations and factor loadings for instrumental measures of mastery motivation 212 11.2 Means, standard deviations and factor loadings for expressive measures of mastery motivation 214 11.3 Means, standard deviations and factor loadings for competence measures 215 11.4 Same-age and cross-age prediction of instrumental mastery motivation factors 220 11.5 Same-age and cross-age prediction of expressive mastery motivation factors 223 11.6 Same-age and cross-age prediction of competence factors 225 12.1 Descriptive characteristics of the sample 234 12.2 Definitions of behaviours observed on the mastery motivation tasks 236 12.3 Means and standard deviations of mastery motivation measures on two tasks 237 12.4 Correlations among the mastery motivation measures 239 12.5 Descriptive statistics on measures of children’s functioning at three age points 240 12.6 Correlations between mastery motivation measures at age 3 and children’s cognitive performance, adaptive behaviour and independent play at three time points 241 12.7 Partial correlations between mastery motivation measures and characteristics of the family environment, controlling for children’s cognitive performance 243 Contributors Inge Bretherton, Child and Family Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wyoming, WI 53706, USA.