Intrinsic Motivation and Behavior Effectiveness in Retarded Persons

Publisher Summary This chapter examines the relationships between “task intrinsic motivation,” and the behavior effectiveness of mentally retarded persons within the context of a historical view of research on personality variables and mental retardation. Individual differences in motivational orientation have been shown to be reliably measurable down to mental age (MA) 3 years, to appear in mentally retarded and nonretarded persons, to be correlated with chronological age, mental age, social class, and IQ, and to be associated with effectiveness of laboratory learning and levels of school achievement. There are strong indications that such individual differences are also associated with mental health, work satisfaction, and social adjustment. Behavioral effectiveness is achieved most readily when incentives are matched to individual differences in motivational orientation. Relatively intrinsically motivated persons work harder and longer, choose higher performance goals, and set leaner schedules of reinforcement for themselves than do relatively extrinsically motivated persons. Retarded persons who are relatively more intrinsically motivated are capable of more self-regulating behavior and may be able to function more effectively in independent living situations than will extrinsically motivated persons of comparable age, sex, and IQ. There are suggestions that motivational orientation may be modifiable with relatively intense, prolonged, and appropriate treatment.

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