The purpose of the present study was to investigate response to challenge in young children and to determine its concurrent and predictive relationship to children's goal orientation and mother's verbalizations. Participants included 72 four to six year old children. These children were selected from an initial pool of 239 white middle- and upper-middle class children attending private day-care centers and public kindergartens in the Tallahassee area. Data was collected during six individual sessions over the course of one year. The children attempted challenging tasks individually and while interacting with their mothers. Moderate stability was found on the challenge preference measure over the one-year interval lending support to the notion that individual differences in motivational patterns emerge by this young age. The two-week stability was also found to be in the moderate range and less than expected given the moderate one-year stability. The measure of goal orientation was found to have moderate stability over a six-month interval and was related concurrently to challenge preference. Goal orientation, however, was not found to be predictive of future challenge preference. Five mother verbalizations were coded from mother-child interactions and the only negative comments about the child were found to predict future challenge preference in children. This finding was particularly notable given that the item was based on the mere presence or absence of the negative comment and only 24% of the mothers made such a comment. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-06, Section: B, page: 3479. / Major Professor: Janet A. Kistner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77473 |
| Contributors | Robertson, Bruce J., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 119 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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