Task persistence is an important learning-related behavior associated with academic success. Although persistence has been related to motivational beliefs and cognitive skills, these constructs are typically studied independently, limiting our understanding of relations among them. The current investigation was designed to understand how these concepts are related in early elementary school, a developmental period characterized by high motivational beliefs, growth in cognitive control, and the transition to school. Interest, perceived competence, and response inhibition were evaluated as predictors of children’s (N = 73, M_age = 6.91 years) likelihood to demonstrate high persistence on a challenging puzzle task. Results provided evidence that motivational constructs are not sufficient for understanding differences in persistent behavior during this developmental period. Specifically, relations between interest and perceived competence and task persistence were present only for children with moderate to high response inhibition skills. Moreover, gender differences in task persistence emerged, indicating that although interest and perceived competence motivated all students to exhibit persistence, girls were still more likely to demonstrate task persistence than boys. Overall, findings suggest that task persistence in elementary school is a complex behavior that requires both cognitive control skills to support engagement and the motivation to continue engaging as task difficulty increases.

任务坚持是一种与学业成功相关的重要学习行为。尽管坚持与动机信念和认知技能有关，但这些结构通常是独立研究的，限制了我们对它们之间关系的理解。目前的调查旨在了解这些概念在小学早期是如何相关的，这是一个以高动机信念、认知控制增长和向学校过渡为特征的发展时期。兴趣、感知能力和反应抑制被评估为儿童 ( N  = 73, M_年龄 = 6.91 年）在具有挑战性的拼图任务中表现出高度持久性的可能性。结果提供的证据表明，在这个发展时期，动机结构不足以理解持续行为的差异。具体而言，兴趣与感知能力和任务持久性之间的关系仅存在于具有中度至高度反应抑制技能的儿童中。此外，任务持久性的性别差异出现，表明尽管兴趣和感知能力促使所有学生表现出持久性，但女孩仍然比男孩更有可能表现出任务持久性。总体，