Motivational Orientation, Error Monitoring, and Academic Performance in Middle Childhood: A Behavioral and Electrophysiological Investigation

Previous research suggests that academic motivation orientation relates to students' causal interpretations about academic outcomes and their emotional reactions to those outcomes. The current study examines how student motivation may relate to certain neurophysiological systems that are thought to underlie the processing of successes and failures. In the cognitive neuroscience literature, the error-related negativity (ERN) in the event-related potential has been associated with error processing and the degree of an individual's emotional investment in his or her performance. The current study examined the relation between academic motivational characteristics and ERN amplitude during a speeded reaction time task in 3rd- to 5th-grade students (n = 17). Intrinsically oriented students displayed larger amplitude ERN responses and made more internally directed attributions about their task performance. The findings suggest that students with high intrinsic orientation attribute performance to personal control and that their error-monitoring system is more strongly engaged by performance errors.