2. Motivation

Motivation is a combination of psychological causes that explain human behaviour, its beginning, direction and intensity of activity. Motivation consists of a number of motives (often opposing each other). Motivation may be considered as a process of continuous choosing and taking decisions on the basis of weighing different behavioural alternatives.

Motivation can be extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic motivation is the kind of motivation under which a human acts not because he or she wants to, understands the needs, or consciously tries to achieve some goals set for himself/herself but only because he or she is compelled to act by some external stimuli. Extrinsic motivation can be that of reward and punishment. For learning extrinsic motivation is not very effective because what is learned due to extrinsic motivation tends to be forgotten after the extrinsic motivation stops its action (e.g., when the desired learning grade is obtained).

Intrinsic motivation is generated by internal motives/stimuli – those of an acting person himself/herself (because he or she wants, feels the needs or set himself/herself definite goals). Intrinsic motivation can be prospective and process motivation.

Prospective motivation is the one under the influence of which a person does not really want to do something or to behave in a certain manner but realizes that without such actions or behaviour he/she will not be able to achieve the future personal goals important for him/her and to satisfy his/her personal needs. In learning prospective motivation is more effective than extrinsic motivation but yet, it does not help to avoid forgetting when the immediate need in what has been learned passes (for instance, after passing an exam successfully).

Process motivation is such a kind of motivation when the process of activity itself brings deep satisfaction to a person independently of the goal of that activity (like in hobbies). This is the best motivation for learning because everything learned under the influence of process motivation is most effortlessly understood, best retained in memory and is hardest to forget. The ways of developing process learning motivation are: 1) using learning materials that really interest and attract students; 2) using learning activities that really interest and attract students; 3) giving students opportunities for self-expression through the subject matter of what is being learned (the most efficient and universal method of developing process learning motivation).

Lecture 5. Psychology of human activities and human learning, attention, perception and imagination

1. Psychology of human activities

Human activity is directed at cognition and creative transformation of the surrounding world including the human being himself/herself and the conditions of his/her existence. Human activities are generated by human needs which, unlike the needs of animals, are not only and not so much natural but are mostly artificial originating from the appropriation by a person of the achievements of cultural and historical development of humankind.

The principal types of human activities developed and functioning in ontogenesis are:

1. Communicating;

2. Playing;

3. Learning and

4. Working.

Human activities are impossible without psychic processes such as attention, perception, imagination, memory, thinking and speech. But those processes are not only component parts of human activities, they also develop in human activities and their development without human activity is as impossible as human activity is impossible without them.

Every human activity is composed of actions and operations, and the structure of activity may be shown as in Fig. 3.

activity

actions

operations

Fig. 3. The structure of human activity

Actions are the constituent parts of an activity and their difference from activities lies in the fact that, while an activity has its own goal and motive, an action has its own goal but the motive for doing a separate action belongs to the activity as a whole. If the motive is shifted to the goal of the action, the action itself becomes an activity. Operations do not have either a goal or a motive of their own. They are only a means of performing separate actions.

We get developed operations when they start to be performed in an automatic manner, without realization, i.e. sub(un)consciously. The psychic mechanisms for performing operations are called automatisms. They develop as a result of practice and are automated components of skills. Automatisms are implemented on the level of unconscious control.

Skills are developed as a result of coordinating different automatisms for performing a certain action implemented on the level of conscious control. Thus, skills are psychic mechanisms for performing separate actions that are united in an integral activity.

There are also habits which, unlike automatisms and skills, are an inflexible and, therefore, often unproductive component of activity.