Students also regulate their motivation by emphasizing or articulating particular reasons
for wanting to complete an activity in which they are engaged. That is, students use thoughts or
sub-vocal statements to purposefully prompt themselves to recall or make salient some
underlying reason they have for wanting to continue working on the activity. Consistent with
distinctions within achievement goal theory, students may rely on different types of goals to
increase their motivation. Students may sub-vocalize or think about mastery-related goals such
as satisfying their curiosity, becoming more competent or knowledgeable about a topic, or
increasing their feelings of autonomy. To assess this type of mastery self-talk, students are
asked to respond to six items including “I tell myself that I should keep working just to learn as
much as I can” (see Appendix A). Alternatively, when faced with an urge to quit studying a
student may think about getting high grades, or doing well in a class as a way of convincing
themselves to continue working. This type of strategy, labeled performance or extrinsic selftalk,
includes items such as “I convince myself to keep working by thinking about getting good
grades.” Finally, students may think about more specific performance-approach goals such as
doing better than others or showing one’s innate ability in order to keep themselves working