As previously mentioned, Robert White (1959) examined how people desire to have a lasting effect upon the environment, especially through competency. According to White, this competency is motivated by self-rewarding behaviors induced by a desire for challenge, curiosity, mastery, and playfulness. Harter (1978) elaborated on White’s research by including the development of children. Harter specifically combined internalization of self-regulated skills such as, self-judgment, self-reinforcement, and self-set mastery goals, and the children's socialization history; who emotionally or psychologically impacted them, and to what degree.
Additionally, she contends that appropriate praise and feedback by the child’s custodian (especially the parent), helps infuse a sense of independence. This freedom promotes the use of self-defined goals, and attempts that are free of adult intervention. They will, by extension, be capable of monitoring their own mastery attempts, have the ability to judge personal competency using their own internal criteria, and learn how to reinforce successful attempts.
Furthermore, positive reinforcement in the form of approval serves several important functions. First, a motivational-emotional function may provide incentivized behavior, exciting the child to further behave in a way that anticipates reward. Second, the affective feelings brought on by satisfaction provide a sense of reward. Finally, an informational function can offer feedback in two ways. Either generally, providing the necessary information to determine self-defined mastery goals, and the way to define important appropriate behaviors and outcomes. Or specifically, providing feedback as an evaluative function on the success or failure of their behavior.
As children get older, their need of an external agent to help interpret and define their experiences either positively or negatively becomes less necessary. They become able to engage in the activities of the previous paragraph on their own. This leads to the likelihood of re-engaging in their chosen endeavor as they become more focused on internal sources of assessment like self-determined goals and interests. However, this is not to the complete exclusion of external sources of assessment. This is what is called motivational orientation.
Contrastingly, a parent or guardian can have a debilitating effect on the child's perceived competence and their subsequent motivation to continue. This can happen through a lack of reinforcement, disapproval of independent mastery attempts, disapproval modeling, and the reinforcement of dependency upon adults. This sense of incompetence becomes the internalized sentiment. Instead of a self-reward system due to positive results, they develop a self-punishment system. If this is the case during the elementary school years, it is likely that the need for externally defined goals and external approval will continue into the middle-childhood years.
All of the aforementioned research leads one to understand the origins of a child's self-esteem and internal control over various outcomes throughout life. In the positive, they have a general sense of competency and the ability to impact their environment or circumstances. In the negative, they will likely have a general sense of incompetency and an inability to have an impact on their environment or circumstances. This is the difference between independence and learned helplessness. It would not be a stretch to conclude how a child might feel a sense of intrinsic pleasure or anxiety respectively throughout life.
Finally, Harter asserts that a child's view of self-esteem and their perception of control is not as a trait (an innate sentiment applied to all circumstances similarly), but compartmentalized (seeing each circumstance as its own entity and reacting accordingly). She suggests that the concepts must be thought of as components that can be applied to various aspects of life independently where a child may have positive feelings in one area, while at the same time having negative ones in another.
Harter has set out to devise a quantitative scale to assess the component measures across three specific domains and one general domain:
Specifically
The scale will allow any researcher to investigate the profile of a child's perceived competence across each of these domains. It is quite likely that a child will perceive greater competencies in some domains than in others.
It is important to note that according to both Granleese and Joseph (1994) and Wichstrom (1995), Harter amended the 1978 domain categories for early childhood age ranges (Harter, 1985b). In addition, domain categories increased for age-relatedness of adolescents, creating domains commensurate with the added complexity of cognitive and differentiating abilities across a wider span of life concepts (Harter, 1988).
Additionally, she contends that appropriate praise and feedback by the child’s custodian (especially the parent), helps infuse a sense of independence. This freedom promotes the use of self-defined goals, and attempts that are free of adult intervention. They will, by extension, be capable of monitoring their own mastery attempts, have the ability to judge personal competency using their own internal criteria, and learn how to reinforce successful attempts.
Furthermore, positive reinforcement in the form of approval serves several important functions. First, a motivational-emotional function may provide incentivized behavior, exciting the child to further behave in a way that anticipates reward. Second, the affective feelings brought on by satisfaction provide a sense of reward. Finally, an informational function can offer feedback in two ways. Either generally, providing the necessary information to determine self-defined mastery goals, and the way to define important appropriate behaviors and outcomes. Or specifically, providing feedback as an evaluative function on the success or failure of their behavior.
As children get older, their need of an external agent to help interpret and define their experiences either positively or negatively becomes less necessary. They become able to engage in the activities of the previous paragraph on their own. This leads to the likelihood of re-engaging in their chosen endeavor as they become more focused on internal sources of assessment like self-determined goals and interests. However, this is not to the complete exclusion of external sources of assessment. This is what is called motivational orientation.
Contrastingly, a parent or guardian can have a debilitating effect on the child's perceived competence and their subsequent motivation to continue. This can happen through a lack of reinforcement, disapproval of independent mastery attempts, disapproval modeling, and the reinforcement of dependency upon adults. This sense of incompetence becomes the internalized sentiment. Instead of a self-reward system due to positive results, they develop a self-punishment system. If this is the case during the elementary school years, it is likely that the need for externally defined goals and external approval will continue into the middle-childhood years.
All of the aforementioned research leads one to understand the origins of a child's self-esteem and internal control over various outcomes throughout life. In the positive, they have a general sense of competency and the ability to impact their environment or circumstances. In the negative, they will likely have a general sense of incompetency and an inability to have an impact on their environment or circumstances. This is the difference between independence and learned helplessness. It would not be a stretch to conclude how a child might feel a sense of intrinsic pleasure or anxiety respectively throughout life.
Finally, Harter asserts that a child's view of self-esteem and their perception of control is not as a trait (an innate sentiment applied to all circumstances similarly), but compartmentalized (seeing each circumstance as its own entity and reacting accordingly). She suggests that the concepts must be thought of as components that can be applied to various aspects of life independently where a child may have positive feelings in one area, while at the same time having negative ones in another.
Harter has set out to devise a quantitative scale to assess the component measures across three specific domains and one general domain:
Specifically
- Cognitive competence
- Social or interpersonal competence
- Physical competence- primarily in athletic skill
- Feelings of worth or esteem independent of any skill
The scale will allow any researcher to investigate the profile of a child's perceived competence across each of these domains. It is quite likely that a child will perceive greater competencies in some domains than in others.
It is important to note that according to both Granleese and Joseph (1994) and Wichstrom (1995), Harter amended the 1978 domain categories for early childhood age ranges (Harter, 1985b). In addition, domain categories increased for age-relatedness of adolescents, creating domains commensurate with the added complexity of cognitive and differentiating abilities across a wider span of life concepts (Harter, 1988).