Session 1 - Keynote: Mastery motivation from early childhood to early adulthood: Findings from a 20-year study of individuals with Down syndrome
Linda Gilmore, Adjunct Professor in the School of Psychology & Counselling, Queensland University of Technology & Monica Cuskelly Director of Research, Applied Research Centre for Disability and Wellbeing, University of Tasmania, Australia.
Mastery motivation, the drive to become competent, is expressed through behaviours such as persistence with challenging activities, pleasure in success and preference for tasks that are optimally challenging. The importance of mastery motivation for current and future competence has been demonstrated, both in children who are developing typically and in those whose development is atypical. But longitudinal studies that document the course of mastery motivation and relationships with developmental outcomes over time are extremely rare.
The participants in this 20-year prospective longitudinal study were 25 individuals with Down syndrome and their mothers. We tracked mastery motivation from early childhood (age 4-6 years) to adolescence (age 11-15 years) and early adulthood (23-26 years). We also investigated relationships of mastery motivation with outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood. Mastery motivation was measured as persistence with challenging tasks (childhood and adolescence) and preference for challenge (adolescence). Mothers completed questionnaire measures of mastery motivation at all three time points.
The results showed very high levels of stability and consistency in mothers’ ratings of mastery motivation across 20 years. The individuals who were rated as more persistent when they were very young children continued to be rated as more highly persistent in adolescence and young adulthood. There were significant relationships of mastery motivation with many developmental outcomes. Task persistence in early childhood was associated with academic competence in adolescence, and with self-determination and adaptive functioning in adulthood. Preference for challenge in adolescence was significantly related to adult adaptive skills. There were also strong positive associations of maternal ratings of mastery motivation in early childhood and adolescence with adult self-determination and adaptive skills.
Although the drive for mastery may to some extent be a personal characteristic, we argue that children’s early approaches to challenge set up a cascade of opportunities and experiences that can promote or maintain mastery motivation over time. Thus, interventions that focus on offering optimal challenge, supporting and positively reinforcing effort rather than success, and modelling persistence are likely to be of value.
