Abstract
The context for acquiring skills plays a major role in determining learning-related self-regulatory patterns. Studies conducted in academics (e.g., Roeser, Midgley, & Urdan, 1996) and in sports and physical activities (see Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1999) have revealed that, compared to ego-involving contexts (i.e., contexts promoting social comparison), task involving contexts (i.e., contexts emphasizing learning and personal progress) contribute more to promote adaptive cognitive and behavioral achievement patterns. Among these patterns, particular thoughts and strategies, such as self efficacy beliefs (e.g., Roeser et al., 1996) and help-seeking strategies (e.g., Newman & Schwager, 1995), have been found to favor academic performances. Surprisingly, in the domain of physical activities self-efficacy and help seeking have rarely or may never have been studied as achievement variables that can be influenced by the context. According to Nicholls’ (1989) achievement goals theory, the role of context in adopting adaptive or mal-adaptive achievement patterns is assumed to be mediated by the goals individuals pursue in a given situation. These goals correspond to task involvement, when an individual uses self-referenced criteria, such as effort investment and personal progress, to assess his or her ability. Otherwise, goals correspond to ego involvement, when the individual uses norm-referenced criteria, that is, when his or her perceived ability depends on how much more competent he or she is compared to others. However, whether these goals are actually solicited by the context has seldom been verified, because individu- als’ task or ego involvement has been measured in few studies conducted in sport. In these studies, goal involvement was assessed either with single-item measures (e.g., Swain & Harwood, 1996) or with stems adapted from scales usually used to measure dispositional motivational orientations (e.g., Williams, 1998). Developing tools that can specifically tap into the goals that individuals momentarily pursue might help to identify directly the mechanisms by which task- or ego-involving contexts influence some typical self-regulatory processes, such as help-seeking and self-efficacy beliefs. In the academic domain, help-seeking behaviors have been identified as adaptive learning-related self-regula- tory strategies (e.g., Nelson-Le Gall, 1992) that may be en- couraged by task-involving contexts. Particularly, these contexts have been found to favor seeking indirect instrumental help, such as hints (Butler & Neuman, 1995), whereas in ego-involving contexts, students are less likely to seek help (e.g., Ryan, Gheen, & Midgley, 1998) or more likely to prefer solutions (i.e., full help) over hints (i.e.,instrumental help) to expedite successful task completion (Butler & Neuman, 1995). Although help-seeking could be useful to motor learning, no research has yet focused on this variable in sport and physical activities.