cated to cultivate that interest (cf. Walmsley & Margolis, 1987). We reckon
that 5–6-year-olds, if not earlier, could develop hot interests. The other spe-
cific interests arecool interests,because they do not benefit for their develop-
ment from any hot mediation and mentoring. They develop much later, and
it is to these cool specific interests that our current task analysis refers.
Eccles et al. (1998) reviewed developmental work (including their own),
which showed that the conscious distinction between the concepts of (cool)
specific interest and utility–importance appears for the first time in the ele-
mentary school years. Why it should not occur earlier becomes clear if we de-
construct this kind of complex, personal scheme (an internalized and self-
reflective volitional plan) and consider the set of essential constituent
schemes that it has to coordinate in an act of mental judgment (M-operation)
in order to be internalized–learned. The essential schemes involved—para-
phrased and coordinated by means of a suitable English phrase—can be for-
mulated as follows: “Ineed to PURSUEpersistently, within the appropriate
contextof use, the LEARNING of (and/or the high performance in) the
task–activity that I LIKE so much.”
This generalized English formula captures what we believe are the six essen-
tial dimensional constraints of any enduring (but cool) specific interest. We
wrote in capitals the constraints that are embodied by operative schemes and in
italics those embodied by figurative schemes. As the English formula indicates,
this construction requires the coordination of six schemes, which generally are
self-reflective, symbolic, and conceptually complex (i.e., are generic, standing
for categories or kinds of schemes). Thus a mental processing mediated by ex-
ecutives is needed to carry out this volitional judgment and learn it. As a conse-
quence, Table 8.2 (and not Table 8.1) should be used to estimate theM-capac-
ity demand of this sort of mental construction–operation. Table 8.2 indicates
that with a maximalM-demand of six mental schemes, (cool) specific interests
may not emerge until the early teen years. This is consistent with the empirical
data (Eccles et al., 1998). In what follows, we give a more detailed account of
the same analysis. Readers not interested in this detail may proceed, without
loss of continuity, to the final paragraph of this section.
There are a total of seven essential schemes involved in the constructive
abstraction of specific interests:
Scheme #1: AGENCYtask:i: This is the chunked structure of constitu-
ent schemes that in formula F#2 produce an instanceiof Agency (as formula
F#2 shows, these schemes are #successful, context,self1, and taskob).
With repeated life experiences that induce acts of Agency in one or another
specific task i, these constituent schemes become coordinated (even in the
preschool and early school years) into multiple complex schemes of Agency;
we shall denote these Agency schemes collectively as AGENCYtask:i. These
complex Agency schemes, driven by motives (or general affective goals),
- AFFECT, SELF-MOTIVATION, AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 221