ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2017
Inverted U-Shaped Curvilinear Relationship between Challenge and One's Intrinsic Motivation: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Uncovering intensity trajectory patterns and their association with blood pressure adaptation following school-based high-intensity interval exercise in adolescents: Wroclaw PEER-HEART study.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
- A structural causal model for robot-assisted upper-limb neurorehabilitation.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences · 2026Article
- Attention in our digital ecosystem: The five interactive components that drive media multitasking.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- The relationship between Chinese medical students' learning motivation and learning engagement: a network analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Simultaneous EEG-fNIRS study of visual cognitive processing: ERP analysis and decision-related hemodynamic responses in healthy adults.PloS one · 2025Article
- Identifying the Effect of Cognitive Motivation with the Method Based on Temporal Association Rule Mining Concept.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Motivation as a function of success frequency.Motivation and emotion · 2021Article
- Desire for Success Awakens: Proof of Competence Restoration in a Non-competitive Environment.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- Haptic Error Modulation Outperforms Visual Error Amplification When Learning a Modified Gait Pattern.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Article
- Hey, what is your choice? Uncertainty and inconsistency enhance subjective anticipation of upcoming information in a social context.Experimental brain research · 2018Article
- The Neuroscience of Growth Mindset and Intrinsic Motivation.Brain sciences · 2018Review
- Taking Others as a Mirror: Contingent Social Comparison Promotes Task Engagement.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2018Article
- A Surprising Source of Self-Motivation: Prior Competence Frustration Strengthens One's Motivation to Win in Another Competence-Supportive Activity.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2018Article
- Being Eager to Prove Oneself: U-Shaped Relationship between Competence Frustration and Intrinsic Motivation in Another Activity.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
The balance between task demand and one's competence is critical for the maintenance of intrinsic motivation. According to Flow theory and Self-determination theory, optimal challenge gives rise to the maximum intrinsic motivation, and an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between perceived challenge and one's intrinsic motivation is suggested. In order to provide direct experimental evidences for predictions of these theories, in this study, we employed the two-player StopWatch game that we previously designed, which made references to the game format of a badminton tournament. According to our manipulation, a male participant was defeated by the same-sex player paired with him (played by a well-trained confederate of the experimenter) in two matches, one with a wide margin (the complete defeat condition) and another with a narrow one (the near miss condition). Participants performed better and reported to enjoy the near miss match to a greater extent. Besides, an enlarged Stimulus-preceding negativity was elicited when participants were actively anticipating outcomes in the near miss condition, suggesting greater anticipatory attention toward the outcome and an enhanced intrinsic motivation to win. Thus, converging electrophysiological evidences from this study and our former study confirmed the inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between perceived challenge and one's intrinsic motivation.
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