Development and Initial Evaluation of an Individualized Moderately Challenging Computer-tablet Mastery Motivation Measure for 3−8 year-olds
Development and Initial Evaluation of an Individualized Moderately Challenging Computer-tablet Mastery Motivation Measure for 3−8 year-olds

Summary/Abstract: This paper describes information about the development of a new computer-based, individualized mastery motivation assessment and reports results from a study using the assessment with a sample of 274 children aged 3-8 years in Hungarian kindergartens and elementary schools. Mastery motivation as an important characteristic in early childhood, in part because it is a predictor of later cognitive and school performance. In the present study, each child was given four number search and four letter search tasks that varied in assumed difficulty for their age from easy to hard. Results suggest that the children enjoyed the tasks and varied meaningfully in persistence in matching target numbers or letters from an array. As the tasks increased in assumed difficulty, children spent more time searching, but were less successful and made more errors in matching the letters or numbers. Mastery motivation scores were calculated based on each child’s computer-calculated persistence on the tasks that were actually moderately challenging for that child. This individualized persistence score was significantly correlated with teachers’ and experimenters’ ratings of persistence, providing support for the measure’s criterion/construct validity. These results support the promise of the tasks as part of a school readiness assessment to predict children’s school performance.

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