The Importance of Students' Motivation for Their Academic Achievement - Replicating and Extending Previous Findings.

Achievement motivation is not a single construct but rather subsumes a variety of different constructs like ability self-concepts, task values, goals, and achievement motives. The few existing studies that investigated diverse motivational constructs as predictors of school students' academic achievement above and beyond students' cognitive abilities and prior achievement showed that most motivational constructs predicted academic achievement beyond intelligence and that students' ability self-concepts and task values are more powerful in predicting their achievement than goals and achievement motives. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the reported previous findings can be replicated when ability self-concepts, task values, goals, and achievement motives are all assessed at the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria (e.

Ability self-concept formation in elementary school: No dimensional comparison effects across time.

In line with the reciprocal internal/external frame of reference model (RI/E model), it is well-established that secondary school students generate domain-specific ability self-concepts by comparing their own performance in a domain socially (i.e., with others' performance in this domain) and dimensionally (i.

Are WISC IQ scores in children with mathematical learning disabilities underestimated? The influence of a specialized intervention on test performance.

Background: Intelligence measures play a pivotal role in the diagnosis of mathematical learning disabilities (MLD). Probably as a result of math-related material in IQ tests, children with MLD often display reduced IQ scores. However, it remains unclear whether the effects of math remediation extend to IQ scores.

Changes in the Relation Between Competence Beliefs and Achievement in Math Across Elementary School Years.

Math competence beliefs and achievement are important outcomes of school-based learning. Previous studies yielded inconsistent results on whether skill development, self-enhancement, or reciprocal effects account for the interplay among them. A development-related change in the direction of their relation in the early school years might explain the inconsistency.

Math grades and intrinsic motivation in elementary school: A longitudinal investigation of their association.

Background: It is often argued that the negative development of intrinsic motivation in elementary school strongly depends on the presence of school grades because grades represent extrinsic consequences and achievement feedback that are supposed to influence intrinsically motivated behaviour. However, only a few studies have tested this hypothesis.

Aims: Therefore, we investigated the role of school grades in inter- and intra-individual changes in elementary school students' intrinsic motivation from when grades were first introduced until the end of elementary school, when students in Germany receive recommendations for a secondary school type on the basis of their prior performance in school.

Conservation Abilities, Visuospatial Skills, and Numerosity Processing Speed: Association With Math Achievement and Math Difficulties in Elementary School Children.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations between elementary school children's mathematical achievement and their conservation abilities, visuospatial skills, and numerosity processing speed. We also assessed differences in these abilities between children with different types of learning problems. In Study 1 ( N = 229), we investigated second to fourth graders and in Study 2 ( N = 120), third and fourth graders.

Why children differ in motivation to learn: Insights from over 13,000 twins from 6 countries.

Little is known about why people differ in their levels of academic motivation. This study explored the etiology of individual differences in enjoyment and self-perceived ability for several school subjects in nearly 13,000 twins aged 9-16 from 6 countries. The results showed a striking consistency across ages, school subjects, and cultures.

Neural efficiency as a function of task demands.

The neural efficiency hypothesis describes the phenomenon that brighter individuals show lower brain activation than less bright individuals when working on the same cognitive tasks. The present study investigated whether the brain activation-intelligence relationship still applies when more versus less intelligent individuals perform tasks with a comparable person-specific task difficulty. In an fMRI-study, 58 persons with lower ( = 28) or respectively higher ( = 30) intelligence worked on simple and difficult inductive reasoning tasks having the same person-specific task difficulty.

[Changes in psychological stress after interventions in children and adolescents with mathematical learning disabilities].

Objective: The present study examined the effects of the Waterglass Intervention Program on children with mathematical learning disabilities compared to dyscalculic children who received private tutoring.

Method: In a pre-post-control group design, N = 46 children (age 7-12) and their parents were questioned about changes in test anxiety, school reluctance, anxiety disorder, and internal and external abnormality.

Results: Children who attended the Waterglass Intervention Program reported a higher reduction of test anxiety, school reluctance, and attention problems.

Longitudinal analysis of intrinsic motivation and competence beliefs: is there a relation over time?

The present study explored whether competence beliefs and intrinsic motivation for different school domains show reciprocal effects over time. A sample of 670 German elementary school pupils (M= 8.8 years, SD= 0.