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Motivation in children
MOTIVATION IN CHILDREN WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES
Monica Cuskelly
The University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia
and
Linda Gilmore
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
Running header: Motivation in children
Abstract
This article addresses the questions of whether there are motivational deficits in children with intellectual disability, whether those with Down syndrome are more likely to display motivational deficits, and how motivation might be supported. The available literature which has examined motivation in children with intellectual disability was considered and integrated to address the questions outlined above. There is little published research on this vital topic. Reports on motivational problems differ depending upon the method of data collection. Observational studies using structured tasks generally reveal no differences between children with intellectual disability and typically developing children matched for mental age. When reports of parents or teachers are used, children with intellectual disability appear to have deficits in motivation. No evidence was found for a particular deficit in children with Down syndrome. The results of this review challenge the perception that children with intellectual disability will generally have motivational problems, although it is clear that motivation is a complex construct, not easily examined in those with intellectual disability. Strategies for addressing problems and for maintaining motivation, based on theory and evidence, are provided. These strategies are applicable across a range of settings including the home, school and more adult oriented services.
Key words: motivation, persistence, preference for challenge, intellectual disability
In 1974, Harter and Zigler presented evidence that children with intellectual disability had lower motivation to master new tasks than did children without intellectual disability. Although the lives of individuals with intellectual disability are today quite different from those of the 1970s (at least in Western countries), the view that people with intellectual disability have motivational deficits has proven to be quite pervasive (e.g., Deci, 2003; Greenspan, 2006). This paper reviews the research evidence about intellectual disability and motivation and presents some suggestions for enhancing and maintaining motivation.
Individuals who are motivated will be engaged with learning activities, will persist with tasks they find challenging, will believe themselves to be competent, will see success as being within their control and will experience pleasure when they are successful. Learning is not restricted to the classroom or other formal situations, and the origins of motivation are likely to be established in children’s early years. In typically developing children, early motivation predicts later academic success (Turner & Johnson, 2003). This association also holds true for children with intellectual disability. Gilmore and Cuskelly (2009) found that children with Down syndrome who were identified as more persistent in the preschool years were more successful academically in adolescence, even when cognitive ability was taken into account.
The Concept of Motivation
Before considering the research evidence about intellectual disability and motivation, the construct of motivation needs some discussion. All individualsstartlife with an urge to explore their environment and become competent within it (White, 1959); however, their interests and views of themselves become moulded as they succeed and fail, so that over time individuals may choose some activities in which they will persist, even if not immediately successful, and avoid others or put no effort into them,because not trying (and failing) is better than trying (and still failing). Some individuals may experience such a large amount of failure that avoidance becomes a regular strategy in many learning situations, especially formal learning situations (see Seifert, 2004).
This type of motivation – to become competent in one’s environment – is known as mastery (or, sometimes, effectance) motivation. While mastery motivation is shaped by experience, the desire to become competent and to continue to learn remains an important influence for many individuals. In school-aged children this desire is generally researched within academic situations and is referred to as intrinsic achievement orientation or task motivation. Some children learn to respond to external reasons for engaging in learning – for example to demonstrate competence (i.e. to do better than others or to win praise) and this is referred to as extrinsic motivation(Senko, Durik, & Harackiewicz, 2008).
Most individuals will be motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors; however, the primary motivation is most important – those who are mostly intrinsically motivated are more likely to learn than those whose motivation is more strongly extrinsic. Intrinsically motivated learners are focused on learning (mastery) while extrinsically motivated learners are more concerned about how they may appear, so surface learning (e.g., learning only what is required to pass a test) and refusing to try for fear of failure are more likely.
In young children, structured experimental tasks have been used to assess motivation. These generally focus on measuring persistence and pleasure after success (e.g., Gilmore, Cuskelly, & Hayes, 2003). Other approaches to tasks that have been taken as indicators of motivation include curiosity and preference for challenge (Gilmore & Cuskelly, 2011; Harter & Zigler, 1974) and outerdirectedness (Zigler, Bennett-Gates, Hodapp,Henrich, 2002).Outerdirectedness refers to a preference for relying on direction from others rather than taking the initiative oneself. Because of the multi-faceted nature of motivated behaviour and also because observers depend on external signs of this internal process, behaviours are often open to more than one interpretation. As an example, some researchers have interpreted slowness to engage with a task as a sign of poor motivation (Vig, 2007); however, others may see this as the outcome of slower cognitive processes (Goodman & Linn, 2003). Another example is the interpretation of sustained attention.Ruskin, Mundy, Kasari, and Sigman(1994) concluded that children with Down syndrome lacked motivation on the basis of observations with difficulty in staying on task; however, it may be that this again reflects characteristics associated with intellectual disability rather than a lack of interest in attaining mastery.
Motivation has also been assessed by questionnaires that are completed by parents, teachers, or sometimes children themselves. Self-report has not been used with children with intellectual disability although there are several studies where adults have responded to questionnaires. While motivation is understood to be an internal process, it is recognised by its behavioural markers (e.g., persistence with optimally challenging tasks or pleasure following achievement); and the questionnaires completed by others focus on these overt markers.
Research about Motivation in Children with Intellectual Disability
Observational Studies
Several research groups have examined mastery motivation in preschool children with intellectual disability using tasks developed by Morgan, Busch-Rossnagel, Maslin-Cole, and Harmon (1992). These tasks are designed with a number of levels so each child experiences an optimal level of challenge (i.e. the task is hard enough to require sustained effort but not so difficult that it cannot be completed successfully by the child). Glenn, Dayus, Cunningham, andHorgan (2001) worked with typically developing children 6 months to 24 months chronological age (CA) and children with Down syndrome of the same mental age (MA). They found no differences in observed mastery motivation. Similarly, Gilmore et al. (2003) identified no group differences in mastery motivation between older children with Down syndrome (CA 4 years – 6 years 8 months) and a typically developing group that wasmatched on mental age (30 months).
Despite apparent similarities in task motivation when children with intellectual disability are compared with others of the same mental age, subtle differences are sometimes identified. Suggesting that deficits in motivation might not be evident in some studies because of the methods used for measurement, Ruskin and colleagues(1994) included a score for the length of continuous engagement with mastery tasks in their research with children with Down syndrome (mean MA = 16 months). Although there were no group differences in the frequency of goal-directed behaviour, the typically developing children displayed significantly longer durations of uninterrupted task engagement. As mentioned above, the meaning of sustained attention is open to interpretation.
It would not be surprising if, over time, children with intellectual disability became de-motivated by an accumulation of failure experiences, but very few studies have examined motivation in older children, adolescents or adults with intellectual disability. Evidence from one study showed, however, that this appeared not to be the case. Gilmore and Cuskelly (2011) compared the mastery behaviours of children with Down syndrome aged between 10 and 15 years (Mean MA = 54.58 months) with a typically developing group matched on mental age using tasks designed to measure persistence, preference for challenge and curiosity. They found no differences on any of these measures, although they noted a trend with respect to one of the persistence tasks and commented that a larger sample size may have produced a significant difference on this measure.
Using a different approach to motivation, Nader-Grosbois andLefévre (2011) examined the self-motivating behaviours (defined as expressing pleasure in the activity, self-reinforcing and maintaining motivation) of childrenwith intellectual disability (CA 73-249 months) in comparison to children of the same mental age (approximately 53 months) across a variety of tasks and found no group differences. In another study, Nader-Grosbois and Vieillvoye (2012) also found no differences in self-motivating behaviour between children with intellectual disability and comparison children matched for mental age (approximately 55 months) when they were engaged in both structured and unstructured play situations.
Others’ Reports
When reportsby parents and teachers are used, the results almost always show motivational differences between children with intellectual disability and those who are typically developing (Gilmore & Cuskelly, 2011; Zigler, et al., 2002). Differences favour those who are typically developing, with individuals with intellectual disability being rated as lower in motivation.
One of the contributors to the difference between the results of observational studies and questionnaire methodologiesmay be to do with the standard being applied (Cuskelly, Gilmore & Carroll, 2013). When a parent or teacher is asked to rate a child’s motivation the standards/he appliesis likely to be that of the average child of the same chronological age, whereas the experimental/observational results refer to children who are of the same mental age. Another possibility is that parents/teachers rarely see children with intellectual disability tackling tasks that are at an appropriate level of difficulty for them. In the mainstream school classroom, in particular, children with intellectual disability may encounter work that is too difficult for them; alternatively, they may be given tasks that are too easy (e.g., colouring in).The match between ability and challenge is an important one in mastery motivation theory, because motivation will be highest when a task is optimally challenging. Parent and teacher perceptions of children’s task engagement may also be influenced by their slowness to respond which may be interpreted as low motivation.
It is possible though that parents and teachers have a more comprehensive view of the child’s motivationthat is based on performance across a range of situations, rather than the relatively contained and time-limited exposure that occurs in the laboratory. In addition, it may be that the structure associated with experimental tasks – where the goal is defined and the approach to success is clear – assists children to maintain motivation, whereas unstructured tasks lack this support and so behaviour becomes less focussed.
It is unclear which explanation for the difference between the two methods of data collection is more correct. Of more importance is the issue of which approach provides the more meaningful information. Longitudinal studies have the potential to address this question as the predictive relationship between measures of motivation and later competence can be established. Gilmore and Cuskelly (2009) reported a longitudinal study of children with Down syndrome where both types of data were collected. Persistence on laboratory tasks at age 4 to 6 years predicted adolescent reading achievement, with a trend towards significance in maths. These effects were independent of cognitive ability. Maternal reports of motivation were unrelated to later competence. This suggests that laboratory observational information may be more useful; however, replication is required before this can be confirmed.
Children with Down Syndrome
Children with Down syndrome are sometimes characterised as having particular motivational deficits. Fidler (2006)suggested that motivational deficits formed part of the characteristic profile of this group. One possibility, according to Fidler, is that motivational deficits become part of the repertoire of behaviour due to relative weakness developing an understanding of the relationships between causes and effects and relative strengths in social functioning. This combination, she argued, may lead children to depend upon others to assist them with tasks. Other researchers have suggested that avoidance of learning is inherent to the syndrome itself, and that children with Down syndrome tend to use social strategies as distractors when faced with challenging tasks (Pitcairn & Wishart, 1994).
For a behaviour to be considered to be part of the behavioural phenotype, there should be evidence that it occurs in most individuals with the condition and also evidence that is does not usually occur in others whose intellectual disability is caused by different conditions (Dykens, 1995). Only two studies were identified that compared children with Down syndrome to a group of children with intellectual disability from other causes. One study compared mastery motivation (operationalised as persistence, curiosity and preference for challenge) of children with Down syndrome (CA = 147 months; MA = 56 months) with a group matched for mental age (CA = 157 months; MA = 55 months) but with a range of etiological conditions (Gilmore, Cuskelly, & Browning, under review). No differences in any measures (tasks or parent report) were found.
The second study examined outerdirectness of children with Down syndrome (CA = 96 months; MA = 49 months) in comparison with children whose intellectual disability had an unknown cause (CA = 106 months; MA = 53 months) (Kasari & Freeman, 2001). Children were presented with two tasks. The first, the dependence task, consisted of the child being asked to complete a puzzle while the experimenter completed the same puzzle next to the child. The experimenter worked so that s/he was just ahead of the child. The second task was an impossible task as the child’s persistence was the focus of interest. Kasari and Freeman counted how frequently children looked at the experimenter’s face, at the experimenter’s puzzle, and how often they asked for help. Children were asked if they would prefer to complete a puzzle they had completed successfully or one they had been unable to complete (a measure of preference for challenge). Children who were more outerdirected would be expected to look at the other’s work more frequently (for guidance) and ask for help more often. Results were somewhat mixed.
The children with Down syndrome looked less frequently at the experimenter’s work than did the children with intellectual disability and there was no difference in requests for help in the dependence task. On the persistence task, children with Down syndrome asked for assistance more frequently and they also chose the solvable puzzle more often. In addition, on the persistence task only, children with Down syndrome took longer to begin the task than the other group. Short latency to engage with tasks has been identified as an indicator of mastery motivation by Vig (2007), although, as noted above, other interpretations are also possible. Children with Down syndrome looked at the examiner more frequently, suggesting that they were more interested in the adult than were the other group.Hupp (1995) has pointed out that mastery motivation may also occur within the social dimension as children seek to ‘work out’ how others function.
There is no compelling evidence for a motivational deficit in those with intellectual disability as a group, nor any robust evidence that motivational deficits are part of the Down syndrome phenotype. Nevertheless,some individuals do present as unmotivated. The following section provides some suggestions, based on the research literature, for promising avenues for enhancing and/or maintaining motivation. See Gilmore and Cuskelly (2014) for a more extended discussion than is able to be provided here.
Influences on Motivationand How Motivation Can Be Maximised
Certain aspects of the environments in which individuals with intellectual disability live and learn are likely to impact negatively on their motivation. Parents and teachers of children with intellectual disability are often observed to be more directive and controlling (Glenn et al., 2001; OckjeanHupp, 2005), thus potentially denying sufficient opportunities for independent mastery attempts. The evidence presented by Tichá et al. (2012) about the lack of choice around everyday activities, such as how to spend leisure time exercised by individuals with intellectual disabilities, and by Bigby, Knox, Beadle-Brown, Clement, and Mansell (2012) regarding the directiveness of some support staff suggests that at least some adults live in environments in which there is little support for autonomous activity.
Motivation and feelings of self-efficacy are likely to be higher when individuals are able to act autonomously (Deci & Ryan, 2008; Grolnick, 2009). Directive behaviour will interfere with the development of confidence in one’s own decisions and may contribute to the adoption of an outerdirected stance, where individualscontinually wait to be told what to do and adopt a passive stance. Outer-directedness may also result if help is constantly offered even if it is not actually needed.
Often individuals seek outside help because tasks are too difficult for them. This is an adaptive strategy, although being constantly in a situation where demands are too difficult, and so seeking help is necessary, may lead to generalised low motivation.As mentioned earlier, activities that are optimally challenging are best suited to maintaining motivation (Soltani, Roslan, Abdullah, & Jan, 2011) but the provision of optimal challenge requires a very good understanding of the match between a person’s current level of competenceand the level of challenge in the task. Activities that are too easy are likely to result in boredom, while those that are too difficult are likely to result in frustration. Both have the potential to producedistractibility and other problem behaviours (Bierbaum, Henrich, & Zigler, 2005). For those working with children or adults with intellectual disability, ensuring that activities are neither too easy nor too difficult is clearly crucial for fostering motivation and self-efficacy, and for preventing the behavioural sequelae to boredom and/or frustration. Breaking down difficult tasks into manageable chunks, and scaffolding the gradual building of competence is a well-established and often effective strategy.