The impact of remembered success experiences on expectancies,values, and perceived costs |
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| Institution: | 1. Cognitive and Learning Sciences, Educational Testing Service, United States;2. Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Boston College, United States;3. Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, United States |
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| Abstract: | The “remembered success effect” (Finn, 2010) refers to the finding that challenging academic tasks that start or end with extra opportunities for success are often preferred to challenging tasks that do not include these opportunities. Research on the remembered success effect has identified some memory processes that are thought to give rise to the effect. To date there has been no research on how experiences of remembered success relate to motivational constructs that may be associated with the effect. Accordingly, we examined how challenging math experiences designed to induce remembered success impacted individuals’ expectancies for success, positive task value and perceived costs, and how these motivational constructs related to two future task choices; expectancy-value theory posits that expectancies and task values are the most direct motivational predictors of choice. In two studies, participants completed two challenging math tasks under two conditions: a short task of all difficult problems and a longer, “extended” task that had the same number of difficult problems plus a set of moderately difficult problems. Results demonstrated that expectancies and subjective task value were higher, and perceived costs lower in the “extended” condition than in the short condition. In both experiments, the between-task difference scores (i.e., extended task minus short task) for positive task values, expectancies, and perceived costs were significantly correlated with both task choices. Notably, the positive task value difference score uniquely predicted at least one of the two choices in both experiments. Costs and expectancies were less consistent unique predictors of choice: the between-task difference in perceived costs predicted one choice in Experiment 1, but neither choice Experiment 2, and the difference in expectancies only predicted the choices in Experiment 2. |
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| Keywords: | Remembered success Expectancy value theory Math motivation |
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