Nelson-Le Gall S, Jones E
829 Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
Child Dev. 1990 Apr;61(2):581-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb02802.x.
The present study examined the relation between children's mastery motivation, self-assessment of performance, and task-related help-seeking behavior during task performance. Average-achieving black American children, varying in mastery motivation as measured by subscales of the Harter's Intrinsic-Extrinsic Orientation in the Classroom Scale, performed a multitrial verbal task and were given the opportunity to seek help on each trial after making a tentative response and assessing their performance by rating their confidence in the correctness of the response. A response-contingent payoff system was implemented to encourage children to restrict their help seeking to those instances in which they perceived that they could not make a correct response without assistance. As predicted, children's self-assessments of performance, regardless of their accuracy, appeared to influence help seeking more than the actual performance outcomes. Neither children's self-assessments of performance nor their overall rate of help seeking varied with level of measured mastery motivation. However, the type of help sought varied as expected with mastery motivation. Children characterized by high intrinsic orientations toward independent mastery in academic achievement contexts sought indirect help (i.e., hints) more often than they sought direct help (i.e., answers), whereas children characterized by low intrinsic orientations toward independent mastery showed no preference. These differences in motivational orientation influenced requests for help only when children perceived their initial solutions to be incorrect. These findings are discussed in the context of the analyses of help seeking as an instrumental learning and achievement strategy. The implications of the findings for analyses of black children's achievement styles are highlighted.
本研究考察了儿童在任务执行过程中的掌握动机、对表现的自我评估与任务相关的求助行为之间的关系。以哈特尔课堂内在-外在取向量表的子量表衡量，掌握动机不同的美国黑人中等成就儿童进行了一项多轮言语任务，并在做出初步反应并通过对反应正确性的信心评级来评估自己的表现后，有机会在每轮中寻求帮助。实施了一种基于反应的奖励系统，以鼓励儿童将求助限制在那些他们认为没有帮助就无法做出正确反应的情况下。正如预测的那样，儿童对表现的自我评估，无论其准确性如何，似乎比实际表现结果对求助的影响更大。儿童对表现的自我评估及其总体求助率均未随测量的掌握动机水平而变化。然而，求助的类型正如预期的那样随掌握动机而变化。在学业成就情境中以对独立掌握有高内在取向为特征的儿童比寻求直接帮助（即答案）更频繁地寻求间接帮助（即提示），而以对独立掌握有低内在取向为特征的儿童则没有偏好。只有当儿童认为他们最初的解决方案不正确时，这些动机取向的差异才会影响求助请求。这些发现将在将求助作为一种工具性学习和成就策略的分析背景下进行讨论。强调了这些发现对分析黑人儿童成就风格的意义。
