MOTIVATIONAL AND ABILITY DETERMINANTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN'S INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT BEHAVIORS

Abstract

For over 40 years, child psychologists have been interested in attaining greater understanding and more efficient prediction of individual differences in children's intellectual achievement performances. Until very recently, research on this problem was primarily concerned with the measurement of intellectual abilities by intelligence tests and the use of these tests to predict children's academic achievements. While differences in achievement motivation, as well as ability, were assumed to play a part in children's achievement efforts, achievement motivation was not directly studied as a possible determinant of children's achievement behaviors. In the last decade, however, two major large-scale research attacks which assessed relations between personality variables and achievement performances have been made. One of these, begun by McClelland and his students (I, 14), focused on achievement motivation reflected in TAT fantasy as a potential predictor of intellectual achievement behaviors. The other, exemplified by the research of Sarason and his associates (20). and that of the Iowa Child Welfare Station (2, r3), investigated the influence of anxiety on intellectual achievement efforts. Each of these two broad avenues of research has even-