Mastery motivation is concerned with how children learn or "master" certain tasks. Aspects of cognitive, social and language development are all important and mastery motivation is a key factor in understanding later developmental and educational achievement.

Concentrating on the pre-school child, the book examines how mastery motivation is best measured and assessed and includes innovations in methodology. It also looks at how environmental components, such as the parent-infant relationship or the use of toys, affect the development of mastery motivation. In addition, the relation between the acquisition of longer attention span and persistence in infants, and their subsequent educational achievement, is discussed.

Contributors: Inge Bretherton, Terri T. Coombs, Lois Brockman, Dr. Busch-Rossnagel, Karen Capovitz-Barrett, Robert J. Harmon, Penny Hauser-Cram, J. Heckhausen, Kay Jennings, D. K. Knauf, Jeannette Koks, R. H. MacTurk, Hans Th. Meij, David Messer, G. Morgan, J. Marianne Riksen-Walraven, Juchke van Roozendaal, M. Vargas, and T. Wachs.