A longitudinal study of motivation and competence in children with Down syndrome: early childhood to early adolescence.
For kids with Down syndrome, early stick-to-it skill predicts later school success better than early IQ.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Matson et al. (2009) followed 25 children with Down syndrome for eight years. They started when the kids were three to five years old and checked again in early adolescence.
Each year they watched how long a child kept trying a hard puzzle or game. They called this “persistence.” Later they gave reading and math tests.
What they found
Kids who stuck with tasks longer at age four had better reading and math scores at age twelve. Early persistence predicted school success better than IQ scores.
The link stayed strong even after the team counted out family income and speech level.
How this fits with other research
Laugeson et al. (2014) looked at the same age group and found big gaps in working memory and planning. Those gaps could make it harder to stay on task, so teaching memory games may boost later persistence.
Bassett-Gunter et al. (2017) picked up the story in adulthood. Adults with Down syndrome who made daily choices were more likely to hold a paid job. Early persistence and later choice-making may be two stops on the same self-determination road.
Pfeiffer et al. (1995) tracked people with severe ID for 23 years and saw mostly flat or falling scores. That sounds gloomy, but their group lived in institutions and had many diagnoses. The new Down-syndrome-only study shows a brighter path when kids get family support and early practice at sticking with tasks.
Why it matters
You can teach persistence now and expect real academic pay-off later. Start small: give a four-year-old a three-piece puzzle and add one more piece each week. Praise effort, not speed. Note how long the child keeps trying; use that data to set tiny stretch goals. Over years these minutes add up to stronger reading and math skills.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Motivation has been identified as an area of difficulty for children with Down syndrome. Although individual differences in mastery motivation are presumed to have implications for subsequent competence, few longitudinal studies have addressed the stability of motivation and the predictive validity of early measures for later academic achievement, especially in atypical populations. METHOD: The participants were 25 children with Down syndrome. Mastery motivation, operationalized as persistence, was measured in early childhood and adolescence using tasks and parent report. At the older age, preference for challenge, another aspect of mastery motivation, was also measured and the children completed assessments of academic competence. RESULTS: There were significant concurrent correlations among measures of persistence at both ages, and early task persistence was associated with later persistence. Persistence in early childhood was related to academic competence in adolescence, even when the effects of cognitive ability at the younger age were controlled. CONCLUSIONS: For children with Down syndrome, persistence appears to be an individual characteristic that is relatively stable from early childhood to early adolescence. The finding that early mastery motivation is significant for later achievement has important implications for the focus of early interventions.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2009 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01166.x