The Relationships between Achievement Motivation and the Spontaneous Learning of a Ball Juggling Task

This study was aimed at testing the hypothesis that those who have high need for achievement (High n Ach group) would show higher performance in the spontaneous learning of a ball juggling task than those who have low need for achievement (Low n Ach group). Mehrabian Measure of Achieving Tendency was used to classify the subjects into High and Low n Ach groups. All subjects were given the jugging task with three tennis balls and were tested on how many catches they could juggle on one week later. The High n Ach group showed significantly high scores on the task motivation scale than the Low n Ach group (p<.05). Both High and Low n Ach groups showed significant increase in performance during one week (p<.01). However, there was no difference between the High and Low n Ach groups concerning other dependent variables in the process of the learning. These results did not support the hypothesis. Some reasons for the inconsistency were discussed.