The importance of arousal as a motivational factor in learning to read.

This paper emphasizes the recognition of the fact that while people tend to maintain a preferred level of arousal or tension, they often expose themselves to new and complex stimulation which seems to have no external reward other than that of yielding new knowledge. This intrinsic interest in novelty and complexity is termed curiosity and can be harnessed to motivate learning to read. Teachers must learn to recognize the preferred level of arousal of each child as well as the level at which he functions most effectively. They must control the irrelevant and distracting properties of the environment in order to gain and maintain the attention of the child. Finally they must become skilled at introducing the learning materials in a manner which will maintain a constant flow of interesting stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)