Will environmental interventions affect the level of mastery motivation among children with disabilities? A preliminary study.

Children with developmental disabilities tend to demonstrate lower levels of mastery motivation in comparison with typically developing children. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of physical and social environmental interventions on the mastery motivation of children with disabilities. Participants included 19 children (from two classes) with disabilities between the ages of 2-4 years from an educational rehabilitation centre. The Individualized Assessment of Mastery Motivation was used to assess the level of mastery motivation; the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale - Revised and the Teacher-Child Interaction Observation were used to assess the physical and social environments. A counterbalance study design was used such that the children from the two classes received two phases of intervention, social and physical environmental interventions. The study's results point to the advantage of the social intervention, over the physical one, in improving the child's mastery motivation. However, the results lend support for the efficacy of using both aspects of environmental changes to the overall persistent score. The study findings, although preliminary, demonstrate the efficacy of providing both social and physical environmental interventions to improve mastery motivation.