Abstract
Two brief intervention studies tested whether teaching students to mentally contrast a desired future with its present reality resulted in better academic performance than teaching students to only think about the desired future. German elementary school children (N = 49; Study 1) and US middle school children (N = 63; Study 2) from low-income neighborhoods who were taught mental contrasting achieved comparatively higher scores in learning foreign language vocabulary words after 2 weeks or 4 days, respectively. Results have implications for research on the self-regulation of commitment to solve assigned tasks in classroom settings, and for increasing academic performance in school children in low-income areas.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 403-412 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Motivation and Emotion |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2011 |
Keywords
- Academic performance
- Behavior change
- Desired future
- Goal commitment
- Mental contrasting
- Positive thinking
- Self-regulation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology