The importance of conative factors for individual differences in attention control.

Abstract

Relations between conative factors (task-specific motivation, attention self-efficacy, and self-set goals) and individual differences in attention control (AC) performance were investigated in two latent variable studies. Participants performed AC tasks along with measures of working memory and processing speed. During the AC tasks, participants self-reported their motivation, self-efficacy, and self-set goals for the tasks. Taskunrelated thoughts were also assessed. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that latent factors for the constructs could be formed and the conative factors were each related to the AC factor. Structural equation modeling further suggested that the conative factors tended to account for unique variance in attention, even after accounting for shared variance with working memory and processing speed. These results provide evidence that conative factors are important for individual differences in AC and further suggest that multiple factors likely contribute to variation in performance on AC tasks.