Effortful Control and Achievement Motivation of Institutionally- and Family-Reared Primary School Children

Abstract: My primary objective in this study was to investigate the impact of the upbringing environment on the development of children’s effortful control and achievement motivation. Twenty-five SOS Children’s Village- and 33 family-raised children reported on achievement motivation, whereas SOS Village and family mothers assessed children’s effortful control along with emotion regulation as an additional variable. Consistent with predictions, SOS Village children were characterized by lower levels of emotion regulation than children from conventional families. The data on SOS Village children’s lower levels of effortful control were marginally significant. As opposed to the expectations, SOS Village children had higher achievement motivation than their family-reared counterparts. Moreover, relations existed between effortful control and some of the achievement motivation components, namely, effortful control was positively related to hope of success and negatively related to active fear of failure. A number of associations were also found between achievement motivation components and emotion regulation. Finally, there was an interaction between children’s upbringing environment and effortful control such that there was a significant difference in the effect of a rearing condition on achievement motivation of children with different levels of effortful control. Implications include a focus on developing self-regulation abilities of institutionally-reared children when designing interventions to improve their behavior.