(De)motivating zero-performing students with negative feedback: Does the salience of performance information matter?

Background: Providing students with information on their current performance could help them improve by stimulating their reflection, but negative feedback that saliently mirrors task-related failure can harm motivation. In the context of automated scoring based on artificial intelligence, we explored how feedback on written texts might be designed to be least detrimental for zero-performing students who are likely to receive negative feedback frequently and might suffer from its motivational consequences.

Objectives: This experiment set out to investigate whether making the negative performance information in automated feedback messages less salient reduces the potential threat of negative feedback for zero-performing students’ task-specific self-concept, intrinsic value, and performance.

Methods: A sample of 105 (Mage = 13.97 years) zero-performing students received negative feedback with either more or less salient performance information, after completing an English writing task. We used regression analysis to examine pre-post effects and group differences in self-concept, intrinsic value, and performance.

Results and Conclusions: The analyses showed that zero-performing students’ performance improved but their self-concept and intrinsic value declined over the course of two writing tasks, with feedback provided after the initial task. Contrary to expectations, our findings showed that students’ task-specific self-concept and intrinsic value declined more in the condition with less salient performance information (i.e. without a red cross as a salient visual performance cue). Our findings highlight the motivational potential of performance information and are discussed in terms of the need for further research into how negative feedback can be designed to effectively motivate and support zero-performing learners.