On the effectiveness of a motive modification supplement to a metacognitive reading program

A training study was conducted in order to explore whether the effectiveness of a metacognitive reading program may be increased by achievement motive modification exercises. Participants were 81 fifth graders who either were assigned to a metacognitive reading program without motive modification, or to a metacognitive reading program with motive modification exercises, or to a waiting group. Reading comprehension, text recall, metacognitive knowledge as well as unfavourable attributional styles were assessed for all children before and after training. Both training groups were again tested about 5 months after training completion. The metacognitive reading program revealed increases regarding reading comprehension, text recall and metacognitive knowledge. However, the additional exercises to modify achievement motive yielded only a slight decrease of children's unfavourable attributional styles, and both training groups did not differ in their follow-up performance. In the discussion the issue is addressed how to improve the efficiency of achievement motive modification.