Students' motivational and emotional experiences and their relationship to persistence during academic challenge in mathematics and reading

•State interest and emotions are examined during challenging reading and math tasks.•Persistent students show less decline in situational interest during challenge.•Persistent students report more activating emotions (enjoyment) during challenge.•Increasing (but low levels of) anxiety during a difficult task supports persistence.

Two studies are presented examining 6th and 7th grade students' task-related experiences during a challenging math task (Study 1) and reading task (Study 2), respectively. The main purpose was to analyze the impact of changes in motivational and emotional states on students' persistence. Therefore, situational interest, task-related affect and specific emotion states (enjoyment, anger, anxiety and boredom) were measured at multiple time points before, during and after the task. The results of both studies emphasize the importance of situational interest for persistent engagement through challenge. Additionally, as a negative-activating emotion, slightly increasing anxiety throughout the task was found to be beneficial for persistence. In contrast, boredom (a negative deactivating emotion) turned out to be detrimental for persistence.