Motivating for Competence: Integrating Child- and Family-Focused Mastery Motivation Strategies into Early Intervention for the Extremely Premature Infant and Toddler.

This paper discusses preliminary results of a project investigating the phenomenon of mastery motivation with three significant groups: provider, family, and extremely premature infant. Three focus groups to determine the state of early intervention's knowledge and utilization of mastery motivation were conducted in three states. A repeated measures, causal-comparative design with control group will be used to determine the effectiveness of this intervention by measuring parent-child interaction and parental perceptions of their child's master motivation skills, and three child variables (developmental status, mastery motivation skills, and self-regulation), at ages 9-12 months and 21-24 months corrected age. At 33-36 months chronological age, these five measures will also be taken, as well as a fourth child variable-relationship with peers. Preliminary findings indicate developmental differences appear to alter the presentation of mastery motivation behaviors in the assessment process. Increased variability in motor quality, task organization, and attention to task observed in the extremely premature population also appears to affect the level of success in initiating behaviors toward mastery. Focus group findings indicate there is a great diversity of provider knowledge, comprehension, and successful utilization of the construct of mastery motivation. Overheads explaining the study and findings are provided. (CR)