Generally students will become more effortful, active, pay attention, highly motivated and better learners when they perceive that they have mastered a particular task.
For example, research supports the position that to be able to recognize cross-race faces one has to be attentive and effortful when encoding the face into memory.
Overall, same-race faces undergo better memory encoding processes than other-race faces because they are remembered more often, however, other-race faces that are remembered undergo a more effortful memory encoding process.