The relationship between motivation and performance of university students

Abstract

[EN] Different variables affect the performance of university students. Motivation is one of them, so teachers try to enhance it through their teaching methodologies. However, most of the studies focused on the influence of motivation come from a single experimental situation, so extrinsic variables such as the specific design of the classroom could be affecting it simultaneously. Therefore, although there are reasons to consider that higher motivation helps to increase cognitive performance, the quantification of this relationship is not clear. This was the aim of the present study: to evaluate the relationship of motivation in students' cognitive performance in different design situations, so that the design effect is diluted. For this purpose, a field study was conducted. 100 university students carried out cognitive performance tests in two very different real classrooms, after which they were asked about their motivation. The quantification of performance focused on memory (remembering an auditory list of words, similar to the experiments based on the DRM paradigm) and attention (reaction time to auditory stimuli, similar to the auditory and continuous performance experiments). The quantification of motivation was done through the Spanish version of the EMSI scale, making it possible to discern between intrinsic motivation, external regulation, identified regulation, and amotivation. The results show that there are very strong relationships between motivation and performance in attention and memory; especially in attention. Results may be of interest for educators and for researchers.