Motivation and Learning Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The emotion is fear.

An emotion is a feeling state with physiological and behavioural components, such as fear, anger, joy, sadness or surprise. Fear is one of the basic emotions, arising in response to a perceived threat.

Memory and attention are cognitive processes, and a stimulus is anything in the environment that evokes a response; none of them is an emotion.

Answer: D

Children can be considered motivated if they ask questions seeking clarification from the teacher.

Asking questions shows curiosity and active involvement in learning, an inner wish to understand, which is what motivation to learn means.

Coming neatly dressed, maintaining discipline and regular attendance can reflect rules, habits or pressure from home and school. They show compliance, not necessarily motivation to learn.

Answer: B

Zajonc held that cognition and emotion are independent.

Robert Zajonc argued in 'Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences' (1980) that emotional reactions can occur before, and without, cognitive processing: we can like or fear something before we know what it is. He therefore treated affect and cognition as separate, independent systems. This position was opposed by Richard Lazarus, who argued that emotion depends on cognitive appraisal.

Interdependent, interrelated and integrated all describe the appraisal view that Zajonc argued against.

Answer: D

Such repeated reward and punishment decreases children's natural interest and curiosity involved in learning.

When children learn only to earn a reward or avoid punishment, the reason for learning lies outside the task. Over time this extrinsic motivation can crowd out intrinsic motivation, the natural curiosity and enjoyment that make children want to learn for its own sake.

Rewards and punishments increase extrinsic motivation rather than decrease it, they do not increase intrinsic motivation, and they push children towards performance goals (getting the reward) rather than mastery goals.

Answer: A

They are likely to develop a materialistic attitude towards learning.

When students work for rewards unrelated to the activity itself, such as stars or badges, their motivation becomes extrinsic: they learn in order to get the reward. Research on the overjustification effect (Lepper, Greene and Nisbett) shows that such rewards can undermine intrinsic interest, so learning comes to be valued for what it earns.

Enjoying learning for its own sake, persisting without the reward and setting mastery goals are signs of intrinsic motivation, which unrelated external rewards tend to weaken rather than produce.

Answer: D

This is an example of performance avoidance goals.

Achievement goal theory separates mastery goals (aiming to understand and improve) from performance goals (aiming to look competent compared with others). Performance goals split into approach goals, trying to appear more able than others, and avoidance goals, trying not to appear less able. Avoiding looking incapable in front of peers and teachers is the avoidance kind.

Mastery and task-involved goals focus on learning the task itself, not on how one appears. A performance approach goal would be trying to outshine others rather than trying not to look weak.

Answer: C

The pairing is approval of others; personal satisfaction.

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the activity: praise, grades, prizes or the approval of parents, teachers and friends. Intrinsic motivation comes from within: the child does the task because it is interesting or satisfying in itself.

The first and fourth options put personal satisfaction in the extrinsic slot, which reverses the two ideas. The second option puts 'rewards such as prizes' on the intrinsic side, but a prize is the textbook example of an external reward.

Answer: D

Students with mastery goals set realistic learning goals.

Mastery-oriented learners aim to understand and improve their competence. They choose goals that are challenging but achievable, persist after mistakes and judge progress against their own earlier performance.

Setting high goals to impress others describes a performance-approach orientation, and setting low goals to avoid failure describes a performance-avoidance orientation. Goals driven by fear and shame are typical of failure-avoiding students, not of mastery orientation.

Answer: D

Activities that aim at intangible goals decided solely by the teacher are detrimental to motivation.

Students are motivated when goals are clear, reachable and meaningful to them, and when they have some say in them. Goals that are vague and imposed entirely by the teacher give learners nothing concrete to work towards and no ownership, which weakens intrinsic motivation.

The other three are well-known supports of motivation: moderately difficult tasks offer a challenge that can be met, links with real life make the work relevant, and tasks matched to students' needs and interests engage them.

Answer: A

The teacher should be encouraging students to develop their metacognitive knowledge and skills.

Strategic, self-motivated learners know how they learn and can plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning. That is metacognition, thinking about one's own thinking, and teaching it is what makes learners independent.

Reinforcing every task completed builds dependence on external rewards rather than self-motivation. Dictating ready-made answers encourages rote learning, and stressing objective-type tests at the end of term encourages memorizing for the test rather than strategic learning.