Pleasure Derived from Mastery in Three-Year Olds: Its Function for Persistence and the Influence of Maternal Behavior

Abstract

The study, conducted in two independent replications, run approximately one year apart, explored the possibility that (a) the actions of three year old children are guided and accompanied by self-evaluations and withdrawal, (b) that self-evaluations and withdrawal have a motivational function for persistence, indicating the beginnings of a self-reward system, and (c) are influenced by the mother's behavior when interacting with her child. Natural observations of mother and child, playing a matching-to-pattern game, revealed that most of the children showed self-evaluations and withdrawal. Both predicted persistence in the task, even when their successes and failures were partialed out. They were mediated by the mother's assistance and interference of her child's striving for mastery, mainly by her physical interruptions of the child's activity.