Date of Award

12-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies

Department

Child Development

First Reader/Committee Chair

Wong, Eugene

Abstract

Student motivation plays a central role in academic success, influencing persistence, engagement, and performance across grade levels. Within situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT), motivation is shaped by students’ beliefs about their ability to succeed (expectancy), the importance or usefulness they assign to a task (value), the perceived effort or trade-offs involved (cost), and the situational context in which learning occurs. Although the link between motivation and academic performance is well known, there is limited research on how motivational factors, like those proposed by SEVT, influence the extent of cognitive gains from school-based cognitive interventions designed to improve abilities related to academic success. This study aimed to address this gap by investigating whether students’ perceived value of a computerized cognitive training (CCT) program is associated with improvements in their working memory (WM) performance after participating in a cognitive training program.

Participants included 40 adolescents (33 males, 7 females; M age = 16.03, SD = 1.42) attending four Community Day Schools in California, which serve students expelled or removed from traditional schools due to behavioral, attendance, and/or disciplinary issues. Students completed a demographic survey, the Verbal Working Memory subtest of the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning (WRAML2), and an adapted version of the Expectancy-Value-Cost Questionnaire (EVCQ; Kosovich et al., 2015), which was modified to measure the value students placed on the CCT activity. The CCT intervention, Recollect the Game, is an adaptive N-back task designed to enhance working memory. Participants trained for 20 minutes per day, four days a week, for a total of six hours.

Two hypotheses were evaluated in the study: (1) students would demonstrate significant improvements in WM following CCT participation, and (2) that students who assigned greater value to the training would show greater WM gains than those who valued it less. A paired-samples t-test supported the first hypothesis, revealing a significant improvement in working memory (WM) scores from pre- to post-training. To test the second hypothesis, participants were divided into two groups, labeled as high value and low value, using a median split. An independent samples t-test indicated that students in the high value group exhibited statistically significantly greater WM improvements compared to those in the low value group.

Findings demonstrate that not only does CCT improve WM among at-risk adolescents, but the degree of perceived value students attribute to the training resulted in an apparent difference in treatment effect. This highlights the importance of integrating motivational frameworks, such as SEVT, into the design and implementation of educational and cognitive interventions. Additionally, the current study also contributes to the growing literature on CCT and motivation by emphasizing the practical implications of tailoring interventions to students’ motivational profiles. Considering individual differences in perceived value could enhance the effectiveness, engagement, and sustainability of CCT programs in educational settings.

Download

  Contact Author

Share

COinS