Theories of ability and the pursuit of challenge among adolescents with mild mental retardation

Dweck (1991) distinguishes two different ways children can view their abilities. Children who have an ‘incremental theory’ of their ability believe that it is a changeable, increasable and controllable quantity. Those who have an ‘entity theory’ believe their ability represents a fixed, unchangeable trait. Children with an ‘incremental theory’ tend to display adaptive achievement behaviours such as pursuing challenging activities, whereas children with an ‘entity theory’ tend to avoid challenges. The present study examined the usefulness of this distinction in understanding the behaviour and affect of children with mental retardation in an achievement situation. Results from an attdbutional questionnaire showed that children with mental retardation were significantly less likely to possess an incremental theory of their abilities than children without retardation. However, experimental results showed that when the context highlighted an incremental theory of ability, children with mental retardation showed the same positive motivational response as children without retardation (i.e. they chose high levels of challenge and reported greater interest‐enjoyment). One unexpected finding emerged: children with mental retardation showed a tendency to choose lower challenge levels after no‐reinforcement condition, and actually showed the least productivity under conditions of externally imposed reinforcement. Thus, encouraging an incremental theory of ability and a capacity to provide self‐reinforcement would seem to be especially important among individuals with mental retardation, because it may help to break the cycle of dependency on the approval of others. The present authors' experimental design could have been improved by the inclusion of (i) manipulation checks, and (2) a second control group of children without mental retardation who were matched for chronological age with the children with mental retardation. The self‐report measures should have been expanded to include Dweck's measure of theories of intelligence, and perhaps, Haywood and Svitzky's Picture Motivation Scale. The level of challenge measure could have been made more sensitive by increasing the number of options available (e.g. a seven‐point rather than three‐point scale). Finally, multiple performance trials could have been used along with process measures of children's confidence in, and theories about, their ability. Such a design would allow us to more clearly identify the causal relations among the experimental manipulations, children's internal beliefs, and their subsequent behavior and affect.