“These are the first studies to demonstrate that offering an individual the opportunity to choose aspects of a task may be most beneficial when the individual feels some initial interest for the activity at hand or when the task is such that it can benefit from opportunities to build interest...Thus overall, the results of this investigation seemed to support a sensitization model in which optimally motivated students, those with higher individual interest for the activity, seemed to benefit more than poorly motivated students from having the opportunity to make choices.” (p.531) “In both of the studies that tested the effects of choice on task performance (Studies 2 and 3), participants who made choices outperformed those who did not make choices about the tasks.” (p.532)
Patall, E. A., & Graesser, A. C. (2013). Constructing motivation through choice, interest, and interestingness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 522–534.