Now listen to this! Evidence from a cross-spliced experimental design contrasting pressuring and supportive communications

Teachers' motivational prosody: A pre-registered experimental test of children's reactions to tone of voice used by teachers

BACKGROUND

Teachers' behaviours drive motivational climates that shape children's engagement and well-being in the classroom, but few studies examine how specific teachers' behaviours such as wording, body language, or voice contribute to these outcomes in isolation of one another.

AIMS

This pre-registered experiment sought to examine the often-forgotten role that teachers' tone of voice plays in children's education. Informed by the theoretical framework of self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness, 2017), conditions manipulated controlling (pressuring, demanding), autonomy-supportive (inviting of choice), or motivationally neutral, tones of voice to explore their effects on children's self-reported psychological needs satisfaction, well-being, intention to self-disclose to and intention to cooperate with their teacher.

SAMPLE AND METHOD

Children aged 10-16 years (n = 250) heard pre-recorded teachers' voices holding sentence content and speakers constant across conditions, but varying tones of voice.

RESULTS

We hypothesized a-priori and found that when children heard controlling sounding voices, they anticipated lower basic psychological need satisfaction, well-being, and intention to disclose to teachers, as compared to neutral-sounding voices. We also anticipated beneficial effects for autonomy-supportive versus neutral voices, but pre-registered analyses did not support these expectations. Intention to cooperate with teachers did not differ across conditions. Supporting relational motivation theory (RMT; Deci & Ryan, Human Motivation and Interpersonal Relationships, 2014), exploratory analyses showed that hearing autonomy-supportive sounding voices increased autonomy and relatedness need satisfactions (but not competence need satisfaction), and through doing so indirectly related to beneficial outcomes (well-being, intention to cooperate and self-disclose).

CONCLUSION

In summary, tones of voice seem to play an important role in shaping teachers' impact on their students.

Strengthening the assessment of self-talk in sports through a multi-method approach

Although self-talk during competitive sports is common and predictive of athletes' motivation, experiences, and performance, it is difficult to accurately assess self-talk. An important, yet underexplored, next step in the assessment of self-talk is to rely on a multi-method approach. The present study sought to examine whether tennis players' self-talk assessed either via self-reports or via a live-recorded procedure would relate to each other. Competitive tennis players (N = 120; M_age  = 25.22; SD_age  = 9.82) were asked to perform multiple tennis exercises while verbalizing their thoughts, which were audio-recorded and subsequently coded. Prior to exercise engagement, they indicated their fear of failure, while, after exercise engagement, they reported on their experienced pressure and self-talk using questionnaires. There was substantial correspondence between the coded and self-reported measure, allowing the estimation of a latent factor representing a multi-method assessment of self-talk. Moreover, in a theory-consistent way, both latent factors representing negative and positive self-talk were related to a hypothesized antecedent (ie, fear of failure), with negative self-talk also relating to a hypothesized consequence (ie, perceived pressure). Overall, the present study shows that athletes' self-talk can be measured reliably through different methods. Guidelines for the assessment of self-talk in future research are provided.

Infants attend longer to controlling versus supportive directive speech

Directive communications play a critical role in infants' and young children's daily routines as they are regularly guided by close others. An extensive literature describes two ways of directing action: autonomy support and control. These motivational qualities are thought to be especially important to development as they shape well-being, learning, and exploration. The way in which such motivations are communicated through tone of voice may be especially important for preverbal infants, who respond to tone more than words. Currently, there is little understanding of what role these motivational qualities expressed through tone of voice play in directive speech. To fill this gap in our understanding, we conducted an experiment with 39 infants ranging in age from 9 to 12 months. Infants were presented with validated directive phrases previously recorded by current day-care staff members in autonomy-supportive or controlling tones. Results showed that infants attended longer to controlling tones than to autonomy-supportive tones, evidencing their ability to discriminate between motivational qualities at this early age. Implications for early learning and well-being are discussed.