Academic motivation decreases across adolescence for youth with and without ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder): Effects of motivation on academic success

Dr. Zoe Smith, Assistant Professor at Loyola University Chicago, delivers a video abstract on her JCPP paper ‘Academic motivation decreases across adolescence for youth with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Effects of motivation on academic success’.

Authors: Zoe R. Smith, Marcus Flax, Stephen P. Becker, Joshua Langberg

First published: 10 May 2023

Open Access paper doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13815

Through the ACCTION Lab at Loyola University Chicago I focus on community-based assessment and intervention development for youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT). We are a health equity focused lab that uses liberation focused methods to increase engagement and understanding of treatment needs for youth that have been systemically oppressed (e.g., creating culturally responsive interventions for Black and Latina/e/o by listening to needs of the community and allowing flexibility in the intervention development). We focus on working with Black and Brown youth and their families using a cultural responsiveness and healing-focused lens. This is particularly important for youth with ADHD, who often face discrimination, oppression, and racism related trauma in school, the medical system, and from peers. I also have expertise in longitudinal data analyses and psychometrics. Currently, we are working on Project CRAFT (Culturally Responsive Assessments for Teens), which is focused on creating healing and strengths based psychodiagnostic assessments for teens from systemically oppressed backgrounds (i.e., Black, Latina/e/o adolescents with ADHD). (Bio from Loyola University, Chicago)

Other resources

• Featured paper ‘Academic motivation decreases across adolescence for youth with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Effects of motivation on academic success’, (2023). Zoe R. Smith, Marcus Flax, Stephen P. Becker, Joshua Langberg

Transcript

[00:00:14.280] Dr. Zoe R Smith: Hi, and my name is Dr. Zoe Smith.  I’m here to talk about our paper that was recently published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, titled “Academic Motivation Decreases Across Adolescence for Youth Both With and Without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Effects of Motivation on Academic Success.”  If you would like to get access to this article, you can just put your phone up to this QR code and/or copy the link above, here.  So, you can look at this QR code, which is on every slide.

Okay, so, what are we talking about when we talk about motivation?  Motivation, using the Self-Determination Theory of Motivation, focuses on three main areas, and so, those three main areas are amotivation, so this is lack of motivation, difficulty or lack of interest and motivation.  Extrinsic motivation, which is motivation by external reinforcers, or outside presences, for example, parents or Teachers putting pressure on students to do well academically, or a student wanting to learn something or do an academic task to get a good grade.  So, external reinforcers, and then, intrinsic motivation, which is much more internal process.  Thinking about how do – how are they interested in the work or task?  Are they engaged?  Is this something they’re curious about?  It’s motivation that comes from within and not outside reinforcements.

And so, our team focuses on ADHD, which is a neurodevelopmental diagnosis that is characterised by difficulties maintaining and managing attention, or executive functioning skills, like organisation, time management, planning skills, as well as may include symptoms of hyperactivity or restlessness or impulsivity.  And these symptoms must occur before the age of 12.

And so, one thing that’s important to know is often, we see academic difficulties with people with ADHD because our education systems are not set up well for people with ADHD or other neurodevelopmental diagnoses.  And so, our educational symptom – systems often incentivise behaviours from Teachers, from students, from parents, that are not necessarily ADHD friendly.  And so, that is something that’s really important for us to understand and look at what are other ways for us to increase academic success?  Because very importantly, people with ADHD can be very academically successful.

So, we looked at multiple aspects of academic success, as you can see here, homework performance, math performance, basic reading, as well as grade point averages.  And then, we used the Academic Motivation Scale, which again, includes an amotivation subscale, intrinsic motivation subscale and extrinsic motivation.  So, what we did is we used longitudinal structural equation modelling across five timepoints, as you can see at the bottom of the screen, with 302 adolescents, all of whom were in eighth grade, so around ages 12 to 14, at the first timepoint of the study.  And ended in tenth grade and about two years older, ages 14 to 16, when we assessed for academic success.

Half of our group of teens had a diagnosis of ADHD.  We purposely sampled to have about half of our sample have ADHD and half of our sample did not have ADHD, but both groups could have other common mental health diagnoses, like depression and anxiety.  It was a predominantly white sample that was collected by – in Virginia and Ohio.

So, we had two aims.  We wanted to understand whether motivation across those five time periods changes over time and whether those changes differ based on having ADHD and then, we wanted to understand how motivation across time affects those academic outcomes, and again, whether there were differences for teens with or without ADHD.

So, what we found at first, for our first aim, is that at all timepoints, teens with ADHD reported higher amotivation.  So, that’s up here, so higher amotivation than comparison teens.  But interestingly, only teens without ADHD, these blue dots down here, actually significantly increased that apathy, that lack of motivation for academic success, and teens with ADHD, this marker here, it actually remains stable.  So, you can see it stays right around that, a little above two, and so, that’s showing that teens with ADHD in eighth grade through tenth grade, stay about the same level of amotivation to complete academic tasks, while teens without ADHD increase.

Then for both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, so up here, you can see, again, the ADHD teens have lower levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the teens without ADHD have higher levels, but both groups decrease across time.  So, this is really important to note that for all teens, with or without ADHD, academic motivation is decreasing across a very important time period for teens in the United States to do well academically.  So, the transition from middle school at the end of eighth grade, to high school, is very important for teens to succeed.  And so, this is very clear that we need to intervene at some level to help with academic motivation.

That can look like a lot of things.  It can be more system focused, so changing the school curriculum to be more engaging, active learning, allowing for UDL designed learning.  And so, thinking through how to change our educational system to help increase motivation for our teens, make it exciting again.

Our second aim, again, was to look at whether these different aspects of motivation were associated with academic outcomes.  So, for youth without ADHD, only amotivation and extrinsic motivation were associated with any academic outcomes, and as you can see here, they were only associated with grade point average.  Our grade point average was an average of their grades in language arts, mathematics, science and social studies or history.  And so, we can see that higher levels of amotivation were associated with worse grades, while higher levels of extrinsic motivation were associated with better grades.

And this really makes sense, because getting a good grade, doing well in school, having that pressure from external forces, can actually get students to get a good grade.  But what grades do not necessarily signify is learning and understanding.  ‘Cause I know we’ve all crammed for a test, like, studied really hard the night before, memorised everything, and then, it just completely flew out of our brain the next day.  And so, what we don’t have here in this study is actual learning of a subject and being able to engage with that work.  And we imagined that the way that the education system is in the United States may be hampering that learning, that ability to have this intrinsic motivation to complete work, and a lot of it is from outside, external pressures.

Then we see for the ADHD group that all aspects of motivation are associated with some kind of academic outcome.  We can see that GPA is the only academic outcome that is associated with each aspect of motivation, which again, that makes sense, because for youth with ADHD, they may need that extra boost of engagement and interest and maybe novelty and urgency that may come from intrinsic motivation, to be successful academically and get these good grades.

In addition, we see that there are a lot of other findings here.  For intrinsic motivation, we see associations with homework performance, with numeric operations, which is an independent test.  And so, it mimics – it’s a math test that, kind of, mimics homework or schoolwork, and so, it makes sense that intrinsic motivation would be associated with this, because we can understand that completing a task on your own is something that may require some kind of internal motivation.  Whereas math fluency, right here, is a time test.  So, that might be an external reinforcer that’s helping students to be able to be engaged with that task because of the urgency of completing it.

And so, importantly, all teens are decreasing on motivation and for all teens, that affects their grades, which again, are some of the number one things we use to examine colleges or how they did in high school.  And so, importantly, we do need to intervene and potentially change some of the ways that we educate our teens to become more neurodivergent friendly, as well as just increase engagement in actual learning, instead of focusing so much on other types of academic work.  And so, future studies, I would love to see actual tests of learning, but those are, kind of, hard to do because we don’t necessarily know what every teen is learning at the same time, or what their curriculum is.

So, if this was interesting, please follow us.  We have a lot of social media groups, where we talk a lot more about ADHD, culturally responsive work and clinical psychology in general, and again, thank you for listening to our video abstract.