The effects of children's goal structures and performance feedback on mood, task choice, and task persistence

BEHAVIORTHERAPY22, 491-503, 1991

The Effects of Children's Goal Structures and Performance Feedback on Mood, Task Choice, and Task Persistence ANDREA L. NICHOLS JAMES P. WI-IELAN ANDREW W . MEYERS

Memphis State University To assess the mediational influence of children's goal structures on mood, task choice, and task persistence, 10- to 12- yr old children (n = 98) were randomly assigned to use either learning-oriented (self-referenced) achievement goals or performance-oriented (other-referenced) achievement goals during a rule-learning task. Half of the children in each goal condition were randomly assigned to receive success feedback while the other half received failure feedback. Consistent with the hypotheses, children's mood benefited not only from success feedback, but also from the adoption of learning goals. Furthermore, following failure feedback, children using learning goals sought more challenging problems for subsequent trials. Contrary to the hypothesis, children who adopted learning goals did not appear willing to persist longer than children who adopted performance goals. The clinical implications of achievement goals as cognitive mediators were discussed.

A great deal of attention in both educational and psychopathology literatures has been devoted to children's cognitive mediational behavior. Investigators in basic and applied research have focused on children's academic and social problem-solving, self-instructional and self-regulatory behavior, cognitive modeling, and social perspective taking (Meyers and Craighead, 1984). However, little attention has been given to the goals that children adopt which serve to organize and direct their problem-solving activities (Bandura & Wood, 1989; Nicholls, 1984, 1989; Zukier, 1986). Recently, Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and others (cf. Sternberg & Kolligian, 1990) have argued that individuals who aspire to demonstrate task mastery cope Partial support for this research was provided by a Centers of Excellence grant from the State of Tennessee to the Department of Psychology at Memphis State University. The authors thank the Memphis City School System for their cooperation and Apasra Hayes, Andy Miller, and Tina Brown for their assistance in data collection. Requests for reprints should be sent to James P. Whelan or Andrew W. Meyers, Center for Applied Psychological Research, Department of Psychology, Memphis State University, Memphis, TN 38152. 491 0005-7894/91/0000-000051.00/0 Copyright 1991 by Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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more effectively with task demands than individuals whose motive is to outperform others. Specifically, Dweck and Elliott (1983) and Nicholls (1984) asserted that children's achievement goals have a potent influence on subsequent performance. These authors have suggested that there are two classes of achievement goals. Children who hold performance-oriented achievement goals strive to maintain positive evaluations of their ability and avoid self-esteem threats by validating their capabilities to themselves and others. Obversely, children who adopt learning-oriented achievement goals seek to develop their abilities by engaging in challenging tasks that encourage skill development. These different achievement goals may lead children to process task and performance-relevant information in different ways. Their interpretation of this information should affect children's cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. Duda (1989) maintained that for children who are performanceoriented, evaluation of self is gauged in terms of social comparison. Positive evaluation of self follows the child's perceived success on normatively difficult tasks; negative self-evaluation is produced by poor performance following high effort on normatively easy tasks (Covington & Omelich, 1979; Kukla, 1978; Nicholls, 1976). This is consistent with Ames' (1984) argument that children's evaluations of their own performance co-vary with their performance in relation to social norms, and these self-evaluations mediate subsequent affect and achievement behaviors. Thus, performance oriented achievement goals, especially in children with low perceived ability or low self-efficacy, are associated with avoidance of challenge and preference for successes attained with little effort. Failure for performance-oriented children should elicit strong negative affect, have negative impact on self-esteem, and produce rumination about the child's lack of ability. Children who are learning-oriented, judge goal attainment by self-comparison in terms of increases in skill. Failure is evidenced by lack of skill development. Consequently, learning goals are associated with challenge-seeking and preference for mastery through effort. These children are less likely to be selfdeprecative because they attribute failure to lack of effort rather than to some internal deficiency. Consequently, these children should be more likely to select challenging tasks and to persist at a task following failure feedback. Bandura and Dweck (1985), in a study of upper middle class white children aged 10-11 years, found correlational support for the assumptions outlined above. Children in this experiment were asked to respond with their concerns about achievement situations. Children with performance-oriented goals tended to show high levels of concern about avoiding mistakes, appearing smart, and being liked. They also viewed intelligence as a fixed ability, established higher performance standards for themselves, and appeared more vulnerable to negative self-evaluation and maladaptive achievement patterns than did learning-oriented children. Children who held learning-oriented achievement goals tended to adopt an incremental or modifiable conception of intelligence and to measure increases in ability by gains in mastery through task involvement. They also tended to set more attainable performance standards than did performance-oriented children. In the only study to date to attempt to manipulate achievement goals, El-

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493

liott and Dweck (1988) provided fifth graders feedback designed to produce low versus high perceived ability, and then encouraged them to select a task that highlighted the value of either a learning or performance goal orientation. Failure feedback on the selected task followed for all children. Subsequent problem-solving effectiveness and spontaneous verbalizations were assessed. The results indicated that fifth graders who adopted performance goals and assumed low ability performed more poorly than groups with performance goals and high perceived ability, and learning goal groups at both ability levels. The performance goal, low ability group also expressed more negative affect and more self-attributions for failure. Although sophisticated and compelling, the Elliott and Dweck (1988) study requires replication and extension. If achievement goals are to be manipulated, direct instructional interventions must be evaluated. Further, Elliott and Dweck (1988) presented failure feedback to all subjects and did not assess the level of task difficulty for subjects who selected the learning task. The effects of achievement goals have been predicted to vary across success and failure experiences. Achievement goal adoption has also been predicted to differentially influence children's willingness to attempt more difficult tasks. In the present study we induced performance or learning-oriented achievement goals in children and manipulated performance feedback on a rulelearning task in order to examine task persistence, choice of task difficulty, and mood. The following hypotheses were evaluated. Regardless of goal instruction condition, subjects who received success feedback were expected to report a more positive mood, choose more difficult tasks, and persist longer than subjects who received failure feedback. Further, between the two groups that received failure feedback, the children provided with performance goal instruction would report a more negative mood, choose easier tasks, and be less likely to persist than the children who were provided with learning goal instructions.

Method Design and Subjects This study employed a 2 (learning vs. performance goal instruction) × 2 (success vs. failure feedback) between subjects design. Subjects were 49 boys and 49 girls (M = 11.37 years) recruited from the fifth and sixth grades at three urban public schools. The racial composition of the sample was 1070Asian, 44°7o Caucasian, and 5507o Black. Prior to presentation of any measures, the children were randomly assigned across the four conditions. A 2 (learning vs. performance goal instruction) × 2 (success vs. failure feedback) analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the groups did not reliably differ in child's age, and Chi Square tests supported that the gender and racial composition of these groups were not significantly different.

Rule-Learning Problem Children were asked to complete five modified rule-learning problems (Perkins, Meyers, & Cohen, 1988), similar to the performance task problems

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used by EUiott and Dweck (1988). Each rule-learning problem consisted of a set of stimulus cards. Each stimulus card contained a pair of designs. These designs varied on the attributes of shape (square, circle), color (red, blue), size (large, small), and bar position (bottom, top). Children were shown the attributes of the designs and told that their task was to find out, through the stimuli presented and the feedback received, what combination of these attributes was important or correct for that problem. This rule-learning problem was selected because it provided children with an engaging achievement challenge where children could make a systematic guess about the correct solutions, and because performance feedback could be easily manipulated as the number of stimulus cards presented for any one problem was insufficient to derive a single, correct combination of attributes for the problem.

Dependent Variables Manipulation Checks. Children were presented with three questions in order to assess their adoption of the goal induction instructions. The first question was the achievement goal assessment item used by Bandura and Dweck (1985). This question consisted of a sentence stem ("I hope these problems a r e . . . " ) with five completion options. One statement completion option reflected adoption of a learning goal, "I hope these problems are hard, new and different so I can try to learn." All other sentence endings indicated adoption of a performance goal orientation. The question was scored by designating subjects who selected one of the four performance goal endings as having accepted the performance goal induction instructions. Subjects who selected the learning goal sentence ending were considered to have accepted the learning goal induction instructions. Since the Bandura and Dweck (1985) assessment item included an unequal number of sentence completion options to reflect learning goal orientation compared to achievement goal orientation, all children were also administered two additional questions that independently assessed the level of learning goal and performance goal orientations. One question asked the importance of being among the best in the class and children rated their response along a 9-point continuum, with one representing nonacceptance of a performance goal and nine representing acceptance of the performance goal induction instructions. The other question asked the children to rate the importance of working harder to get better along a 9-point continuum, with one representing non-adoption of a learning goal and nine representing adoption of the learning goal induction instructions. Mood. As a measure of mood, children were presented with a page containing six faces arranged horizontally (Happy/Sad Faces Scale, Andrews & Withey, 1976). The faces were similar to the commonly seen "happy faces" but had expressions ranging from a frown to a smile. The set of faces was anchored at one end by "I feel badly about my performance on this task" and at the other end by "I feel great about my performance on this task." The experimenter read the question and the labels to the children who then circled the face that best indicated their mood. The responses were scored so that 0 equalled "feel badly" and 5 equalled "feel good."

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Task Difficulty Choice. Children were told that there would be a second set of problems and that they could choose the difficulty level of those problems. To make their selection, the children were presented with a 5-point scale with 1 representing problems much easier than the first set, 3 representing problems similar to the first set, and 5 representing problems much harder than the first set. The children were asked to circle the number that represented the difficulty level that they wanted in the next set of problems. Persistence. To assess differences in willingness to persist among treatment conditions, the children were presented an additional pair of cards and asked, "Do you want to solve more problems?" If the answer was "yes", then children were shown a series of odd numbers from one to eleven and asked to indicate how many more problems they would like to attempt. Procedure With school board approval, parental consent forms were distributed to all fifth and sixth grade children at three urban public schools. Children who returned their signed consent forms and agreed to participate in the study completed a brief demographic questionnaire and were scheduled for an individual testing session. These sessions were conducted during school hours in empty, familiar rooms at the schools. The experimenters were clinical psychology graduate students who had prior experience testing children, were trained with verbatim scripts, and were blind to the hypotheses of this study. The individual sessions began with a brief rapport-building period to assure children's comfort with the experimenter and the room. When rapport was established, the child was shown a stimulus card from a rule-learning problem and shown all the relevant attributes of the two designs. The experimenter explained that this card was part of a special kind of test that required looking at a series of cards and deciding upon the one correct rule for categorizing these designs. Children assigned to the performance goal condition were then told: "Remember, try to do better than anyone else. Try not to make mistakes because, if you make mistakes, you will not solve as many problems as other students and you want to look smart. Try to solve more problems correctly than anyone else." In contrast, children assigned to learning goal condition were told: "Remember, try to do the best job that you possibly can. The more problems that you attempt and the harder you try, the better you get. I am only interested in how hard you try to solve these problems." The three manipulation check questions were then administered to assess the adoption of the achievement goal instructions. Using a practice set of stimulus cards, children were shown the relevant attributes of the designs and then told that they would be shown a series of these cards. On each stimulus card one design would contain the important

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attribute and the other design would not. For each card they would have to pick one design and the experimenter would tell them if the selected design did or did not include the important attribute. The children's task was to determine, by trial and error, which of the attributes was the important one. At the end of the set of cards, children were informed that they would be asked to name the important attribute. A second practice set was used to verify that the children understood the directions. The experimenter then presented the five rule-learning problems. Following the presentation of each stimulus card, the children made a selection by pointing to one of the designs and the experimenter told them if that design did or did not exemplify the rule. At the end of each problem, children were asked to indicate what they thought was the correct rule. Following presentation of all five problems, the experimenter gave each child success or failure feedback consistent with his or her group assignment. Performance goal subjects in the success condition were told: "You correctly solved three of the five problems. You missed two. Compared to other children your age, you did very well. Remember it is important to solve more problems correctly than anyone else your age. When you solve more problems that other kids, it makes you look real smart. You look smarter when you get more problems correct. How well can you do on another set?" Performance goal subjects in the failure condition were told: "You correctly solved three of the five problems. You missed two. Compared to other children your age, you did not do so well. Remember it is important to solve more problems correctly than anyone else your age. When you solve more problems than other kids, it makes you look real smart. You look smarter when you get more problems correct, How well can you do on another set?" Learning goal subjects in the success condition were told: "You correctly solved three o f the five problems. You missed two. You must have tried very hard to do so well. Remember, the harder you try, the more you learn and the more problems you will solve. When you work very hard you get better at solving these problems. How well can you try on another set? Learning goal subjects in the failure condition were told: "You correctly solved three of the five problems. You missed two. You must not have tried very hard to do so poorly.

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Remember, the harder you try, the more you learn and the more problems you will solve. When you work very hard you get better at solving these problems. How hard can you try on another set? The experimenter then administered the mood, task difficulty choice, and persistence measures. Before concluding the session, children were administered a final rule-learning problem and then given strong positive feedback for their performance. Results

Manipulation Checks A 2 (learning vs. performance goal instruction) × 2 (selection o f learning vs. performance goal). Chi square was performed on the achievement goal assessment item (Bandura & Dweck, 1985). There was a significant difference in reported achievement goals consistent with the presented goal instructions, x 2 (1, n = 98) = 15.37,17 < 001. Of the 43 children who received the performance goal instruction, 32 (69.6070) selected a performance goal sentence ending. O f the 55 children who received the learning goal instruction, 36 (65.507o) selected the learning goal sentence ending. Student t-tests were conducted on the two additional manipulation check questions. Children in the performance goal condition (M = 7.47, SD = 1.85) reported that being among the best in the class was more important when compared to children who were provided with learning goals (M = 5.34, SD = 2.77), t(79) = 2.36, p < .05. On the third manipulation check question, how important is it to work harder to get better, no reliable differences were identified. However, children in the learning goal condition (M = 8.26, SD = 1.42) tended to report this goal as more important than did children in the performance goal condition (M = 7.16, SD = 2.10). Mood A 2 (learning vs. performance goal instruction) x 2 (success vs. failure feedback) ANOVA was performed on the children's rating o f mood. There was a main effect for feedback, (F(1,94) = 7.00, p < .01) and a main effect for goal, (F(1,94) = 13.76, p < .001). Children who received failure feedback reported a more negative mood than children who received success feedback regardless o f goal condition. In addition, learning goal subjects reported more positive mood than performance goal subjects regardless of feedback condition. Means and standard deviations are presented in Table 1.1 Task Difficulty Choice A 2 (learning vs. performance goal instruction) x 2 (success vs. failure feedback) ANOVA was performed on, children's choice of difficulty level for sub' Analyses of mood, task difficulty,and task performancewererepeated to examinethe possible interactionbetweengoal instruction, performancefeedbackand subject'sgender. No main effects or interactions involvinggender were statistically significant.

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NICHOLS, WHELAN, & MEYERS TABLE 1 MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR MOOD, CHOICE OF TASK DIFFICULTY, AND PERSISTENCE ACROSS GOAL INSTRUCTION AND FEEDBACK CONDITIONS

Goal Instruction

Feedback

M°°da

Task Difficulty Ch°iceb

Persistence¢

Condition

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

Learning

Success Failure

3.25 2.81

(.79) (.89)

3.50 3.89

(1.19) (.93)

6.15 5.07

(3.77) (1.85)

Performance

Success Failure

2.62 1.97

(1.12) (1.16)

3.43 3.03

(.87) (.85)

4.10 4.87

(2.91) (1.93)

a Higher value reflects more positive mood. Range: 0 to 5. b Higher value reflects more difficult task choice. Range: 1 to 5. c Subjects report o f the number of additional problems that they would like to do.

sequent tasks. Contrary to our hypothesis, children who received success feedback did not choose more difficult problems for subsequent trials than children who received failure feedback. However, as hypothesized, there was a significant interaction between feedback and goal instruction, F(1,94) = 4.01, p < .05. Fisher's protected t-test or Least-Significant Difference test was used to evaluate this interaction. As shown in Figure 1, children who received success feedback regardless of goal instruction did not select reliably different levels of task difficulty. Within the failure feedback condition, children who received learning goal instructions chose to do more difficult subsequent tasks than children who adopted performance goal orientations. Means and standard deviations of task choice difficulty are presented in Table 1. Persistence A Chi square test was performed to assess the influence of goal induction and feedback on the children's willingness to persist or to discontinue the testing. Ninety-four percent of all children opted to continue the procedure. No reliable differences were found between groups in their desire to persist on the task. The children who chose to persist were then asked to indicate how many additional problems they would like to do. A 2 (learning vs. performance goal instruction) x 2 (success vs. failure feedback) ANOVA was performed on the child's choice of how many problems to attempt. No significant differences were identified. Regardless of goal or feedback condition, children's selection of the number of additional problems they would choose did not differ. Means and standard deviations of the number of problems chosen are presented in Table 1.

Discussion This study attempted to manipulate children's achievement goal orientation and performance feedback on a novel task, and then evaluate the effects

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CHILDREN'S GOAL STRUCTURES

~-~1 Structure ~aming ~erformance

.~ 0

3

2

[...

Success

Failure Feedback

F~o. 1. Selectionof the difficultylevelfor subsequenttasks by childrenwho receivedperformance versus learning goals followingsuccess or failure feedback.

on children's task choice, persistence, and subsequent mood. We predicted that regardless of goal instruction condition children who received success feedback would choose more difficult tasks, indicate a desire to persist longer, and report a more positive mood than children who received failure feedback. Similarly, we hypothesized that between the two groups that received failure feedback the children provided with learning goal instruction would choose more challenging tasks, be more likely to persist in subsequent tasks, and report a more positive mood when compared to children who were provided with performance goal instructions. On the measures of mood and task choice these hypotheses were supported. Children's mood benefited from both the adoption of learning goals and the reception of success feedback. For task choice, learning goals appeared to buffer the negative effects of failure feedback and facilitated children's selection of more challenging problems. Only our measures of persistence yielded no support for the experimental hypotheses. Nearly all children reported a desire to continue the task; and neither goal instructions nor feedback reliably influenced children's report of how many additional problems they would attempt. The mood effects of learning goal orientations in the present study were consistent with other findings in both the cognitive therapy (Braswell & Kendall, 1988; Braswell, Koehler, & Kendall, 1985) and attribution theory (Weiner,

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1980) literatures. Indeed, the more negative mood reported by children holding performance goals replicated the findings of Elliott and Dweck (1988). These findings indicated that focus on self-improvement and the development of task mastery through increased effort was related to a more positive mood than a focus on competition and the demonstration of ability. Possibly, the attention to self-improvement that often occurs on new tasks may have led to a more positive affective state. The improved mood may have resulted from an anticipated improvement in subsequent performance. Hence, the finding that both feedback and goal structure moderated the children's report of mood may relate to the anticipation of future success. Alternately, the mood change may have resulted from the distracting effect of a focus on task and away from comparative self-evaluation. Morgan (1989) has argued that this distraction effect is responsible for the anti-anxiety and anti-depressive effects of exercise regimens. Finally, mood may have been positively affected by mastery goals and negatively influenced by the potential failure inherent in the competitive performance goals. Elliott and Dweck (1988) found that verbalizations of negative affect were related to both goal structure and perceived ability level. Children with performance goals and low perceived ability were more likely to express negative affect. Therefore, comparisons with others appeared to have a potentially detrimental influence on children's affective status. Such an interpretation is consistent with previous research on the role of causal attibutional processes in affective reactions to success and failure (McAuley, Russell, & Gross, 1983; Russell & McAuley, 1986). This attribution research would support that the acceptance of a specific achievement goal orientation highlights particular causal dimensions for performance outcome. The emphasis on particular causal dimensions, in turn has been shown to vary with particular mood states. Causal attribution, consequently, may act to mediate between particular achievement goals and children's affective responses to performance feedback. Future efforts in this area may benefit from exploring the possible mediational role of attibutional dimensions. Children who received failure feedback, potential holders of low perceived ability or self-efficacy on this task, selected more difficult subsequent problems in the learning goal condition than in the performance goal condition. This supports the possibility that learning goals and the attendant task and self-development foci may serve to encourage the experience of challenging work (Nicholls, 1984). Such tasks offer an increased chance for self-improvement. An opportunity for self-improvement through increased task mastery, in turn, should lead to greater perceived ability. In contrast, performance goals and social comparison loci encourage an avoidance of difficult tasks. Difficult tasks provide a high probability of confirmation of low ability, while success at less challenging tasks avoids verification of low ability (Nicholls, 1984). In contrast, measures of persistence were not influenced by our intervention. Children in all groups opted overwhelmingly to continue the task. While the appropriate interpretation is that the manipulation did not influence the children's responses on this measure, the novelty of the experimental problems and the attention of the research assistants may have been more rein-

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501

forcing than the daily classroom experience. Or, the children may have perceived an experimental demand to indicate a desire to continue. It also should be noted that our measure of persistence was the children's intention to persist rather than a measure of their actual behavioral persistence. Possibly, a behavioral measure of persistence would have revealed differences among the instruction and feedback conditions. In addition to supporting the value of learning goals, this study replicated the Elliott and Dweck (1988) finding that children's goal structures are flexible, not fixed. In the present study, two of the three questions assessing the effectiveness of the manipulation indicated that organizing goals held by 10to 12-year old children for achievement situations are modifiable through brief, instructionally-based interventions. These data indicated that well-over half the children adopted the goal structure. This finding is consistent with other work (Schunk, 1983; Stipek, 1984) that suggests that children's conceptions of their classroom performance are open to manipulation by feedback from teachers. More broadly, cognitive self-instruction interventions for a variety of children's presenting problems have been successfully implemented using relatively brief procedures (Meyers & Cohen, 1989; Meyers, Cohen, & Schleser, 1989). The apparent ease with which children's goal structures may be manipulated bodes well for investigators of mediational mechanisms of learning goals that account for the encouraging findings of this and previous studies (Bandura & Dweck, 1985; Duda, 1989; Elliott & Dweck, 1988; Nicholls, 1984). Learning-oriented achievement goals and performance-oriented achievement goals differ in at least two important dimensions: the attribution for the performance, and the standard for comparison of the performance. Learning goals encourage the child to make controllable, unstable (effort) attributions using themselves and their sense of mastery as the standard for evaluating performance. Performance goals, in contrast, encourage uncontrollable, stable (ability) attributions using salient peers as the standard for the evaluation. While past research has supported the value of attributional retraining (Dweck, 1975; Pearl, 1985; Schunk, 1983) and a self-referenced standard of comparison (Ames, 1984), the relative importance of these mediational factors in combination needs further evaluation. In addition, the possibility of de-emphasizing children's evaluations of their own performance in the context of social norms may be a difficult alternative in our culture (NichoUs, 1989). Efforts to investigate the process by which one can integrate mastery goals within a competitive peer environment will be valuable. If the constructive effects of learning goals continue to hold up in replications across tasks, settings, and subject populations, longer-term, more comprehensive tests of these hypotheses must be conducted. One obvious area where such cognitive intervention strategies should serve well is large-scale primary prevention efforts in the schools. Kirschenbaum and Ordman (1984) reviewed several models of cognitive behavioral interventions with children and they concluded that these programs can aid children in the development of problem-solving skills for the management of stressful and demanding situations. The addition of learning-based goal orientations within such pro-

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grams opens the possibility that more efficacious, less moody children may be more resistant to the inevitable failure experiences, and so more likely to apply their other cognitive, behavioral, and academic skills (Bandura, 1989; Stipek, 1984). Cognitive interventions with children are now well over two decades old. During the first decade, content-oriented problem-solving and self-control interventions dominated applied research efforts (Meyers & Craighead, 1984). The major emphasis of the work of the past decade has been the development of process-oriented self-regulatory interventions (Braswell & Kendall, 1988). Interventions at the level of goal structures may further develop broad rulegoverned action that influences cognition, affect, and behavior.

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