The relationship between perception of locus of control and academic achievement: Review and some educational implications

In an attempt to explain the evidence which indicates that internal perception of control is postively related to academic achievement, this paper suggests that mediating motivational and cognitive reactions, which differentiate internals from externals, may account for this relationship. Furthermore, on the basis of data which suggest that the perception of locus of control is a changeable disposition, this paper calls for structuring environments that will induce and maintain realistic internal perception of locus of control.     

Children's learning as a function of variation in stimulus characteristics and motor involvement

Results of two artificial letter learning experiments are reported. In Experiment 1, 229 preschool children were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: Two-dimensional small print size (2DS), two-dimensional large print size (2DL), two-dimensional large where subject traced stimuli mounted on cards (3DL), or three-dimensional large stimuli where subject was directed to manipulate stimuli during the first study trial (3DLM). Errors in the 3DLM condition were significantly less than in 2DS, 2DLT, and 3DL. Also, errors in the 2DL condition were significantly less than in 2DS. A replication experiment with kindergarten children failed to show any differences among the treatments. Results are discussed in terms of stimulus dimensions and motor involvement in children's letter learning. Implications for instruction and future research are noted.     

Sources of interference when testing for students' learning from sentences

The present study helps to clarify and extend earlier findings concerning multiple-choice assessment of students' learning from sentences. Interference arising from intersentence similarity was found here to be a function of both the kind of learning strategies students were instructed to employ and the kind of strategies they reported having employed spontaneously. Two major new conclusions follow from the present data: (a) Instructors and test constructors need worry only about certain types of potentially interfering information that is embedded in a set of learning materials: (b) Even when the conditions are right for substantial interference to occur, such interference can be eliminated if students are induced to employ beneficial sentence-processing strategies.     

An analysis of assignment completion and accuracy across time under fixed, variable, and extended token exchange periods in a classroom token economy

This research investigated the effects of employing fixed, variable, and extended token exchange periods for backups on the completion and quality of daily assignments of a total fifth- and sixth-grade class. The results indicated a higher percentage of assignments was completed when the number of days between point exchanges was variable, and that performance was maintained when the number of school days between point exchanges was gradually increased. The overall accuracy on assignments was high, but varying, and did not appear to be under the systematic control of the experimental procedures. Data for all pupils indicated that there were individual differences as to the effects of the various token (point) exchange procedures. Pupils with inconsistent assignment completion during Fixed Exchange Conditions (Fixed Period (FP-I, -II, -III) increased their assignment completion during the Variable Token Exchange Procedures (Variable Period (VP)-I, -II, -III). Thus, the variable sequencing of the number of days should be an important consideration in any effort to maintain the positive effects of token-reinforcement systems within classroom settings.     

Reinforcing contingencies for sex-role behaviors in preschool children

Two groups of disadvantaged Afro-American children, a total of 30 boys and 25 girls, mean age about 42 months; and two groups of middle- and upper-middle-class children, most of them white, 35 boys and 31 girls, mean age about 44.5 months, were observed for patterns of sex-role-characteristic behavior and peer and teacher response to such behavior. At all times, the children in the two experimental groups were being taught by seven women and seven or eight men, about half of whom were Afro-American, half white-Anglo, and who were mixed in the two schools by race but evenly divided by sex. Boys engaged in 16% sex-characteristic behavior, 5.7% cross-sex behavior. The same figures for girls were 18 and 6%. There were no pattern or percentage differences by race or social status of children. Women teachers gave most of their sex-role connected rewards for feminine behavior to both boys and girls. Men teachers rewarded more equably, masculine behaviors for boys, feminine behaviors for girls. Children rewarded mainly their own sex, and gave rewards for sex characteristic behavior. The pattern was even clearer for boys than for girls. In Discussion, comparisons are made with other somewhat similar studies.     

The function of response mode in the coordination of perspectives

Visual perspective taking has attracted research interest as a result of Piagetian formulations regarding its ontogenesis. Some investigators have interpreted failure as a consequence of egocentrism while others have hypothesized task variables as the source of failure. The present study directly compared the effects of a picture selection response with a rotational one. Forty 3-year-olds and forty 4-year-olds were compared on the response modes. Half the children indicated perspective inferences by selecting from a set of photographs while the others rotated a replica. Children were tested on three nonegocentric perspectives. The data were analyzed with a 2(age) × 2(response mode) ANOVA. Significant effects were found for response mode and the age × response interaction. It was concluded that while both 3- and 4-year olds were able to demonstrate perspective-taking competence, the 3-year-olds performed better with the turning task; 4-year-olds were equally successful in either mode.     

Social-motivational development in first grade

Social-motivational changes during first grade were studied longitudinally on a population of 89 Caucasian middle- and lower-socioeconomic status (SES) children. Results revealed that children, on the average, had a more internal locus of control, were more optimistic, and scored higher on an effectance motivation measure at the end of first grade than at the beginning. Attitudes toward school and self-esteem did not change from the beginning to the end of first grade. Changes on some social-motivational dimensions appeared to be affected by children's SES and by their academic success in first grade.     

Student behaviors, teacher reinforcement, student ability, and learning

Ninety-eight children were observed for 6-min periods on each of 10 days during 50-min, small-group classes in either mathematics, science, geography, or language usage. Two student behaviors (on-task behavior and accuracy of responding to teacher-directed questions) and three types of teacher reinforcement (verbal reinforcement for on-task behavior and accurate responding and tangible reinforcers) were coded during each observation period. A post-test of achievement, directly related to the content of the lessons, was administered at the end of the 10 days of instruction. The causal effects of student behaviors, teacher reinforcement, and student ability (reading achievement and intelligence) on achievement were evaluated using path analysis. The strongest effects were from student ability measures, with accurate responding by students and teacher reinforcement of accurate responding exhibiting smaller, but significant effects. Findings are discussed to qualify the relationship between overt classroom behaviors and degree of learning and the mediating effects of student ability.     

Duration of response to teacher questions and statements

To examine the effectiveness of teacher questions in stimulating student participation, 26 high school discussion classes were tape-recorded and the duration of utterances timed by stopwatch. Analyses of variance performed on class mean duration of student response revealed three findings. (1) No significant difference was observed between response to questions and response to declarative statements. (2) By question type, opinion questions received significantly longer responses than factual ones, and closed longer than open; no differences were observed for six other ways of classifying questions. (3) Response to questions appeared unrelated to selected characteristics of classroom, teacher, and student. The findings offer little support to current emphases in theory and practice on the use of questions in discussion classes. The study may be situated within a body of recent research that has failed to validate traditional claims for the efficacy of teacher questions.     

Rule learning and complexity in simulated reading

Three approaches (Rule, Higher-order Unit, Whole Word) to decoding in a simulated reading task were studied. Rule complexity was varied in three experiments employing symbols ($, @, etc.) as stimuli and numbers as responses. CAI was the experimental vehicle. The 110 fifth and sixth grade boys and girls from an inner-city school were randomly assigned to one of the 11 groups in the three experiments. When the rule was simple (one-to-one correspondence) the rule approach was superior, but when the rule was complex (simulation of the final e rule in reading) the higher-order unit approach was superior. Higher-order unit subjects studied examples composed of the fewest stimuli possible to illustrate the rule.     

Help seeking in elementary classrooms: An observational study

This study was undertaken to explore how elementary school children employ help seeking as a means of problem solving in the classroom. In-depth naturalistic observations were made of high-, average-, and low-ability students in reading and math classes at the first-, third-, and fifth-grade levels. Overall, children's rates of help seeking were higher in math than in reading. Boys and girls did not differ overall in the amount of help sought. Boys and girls did differ, however, in the type of help they requested. Children of different ability levels were found to vary not only in rate of help seeking and type of help requested, but also in the type of responses elicited from their helper choices. Implications of these findings for children's achievement, learning, and social adjustment in the classroom are discussed.     

Contributions of existing knowledge structure to retroactive inhibition in prose learning

This experiment tested the hypothesis that prose materials related to existing knowledge structure will be less subject to retroactive interference (RI) than will materials not as easily related to existing knowledge structure. Subjects read successive passages labeled with the names of famous or fictitious characters. In comparison to control groups, subjects receiving initial passages labeled with fictitious names experienced significant RI, whereas subjects receiving famous name initial passages did not.     

Study time and test performance as a function of test expectations

Study time and test performance change as a function of subjects expecting either open questions or a multiple-choice test on the contents of a history text. After studying a first history text, the subjects immediately received a test consisting of either open questions or multiple-choice items. They were led to expect the same type of test on a second text. Study time on Text 2 was self-paced, and the type of test was either the expected or unexpected one (either open questions or a multiple-choice test). The main hypothesis was confirmed that subjects consider open questions a more demanding test than a multiple-choice test. Accordingly, subjects expecting open questions on Text 2 used more study time and performed better on both types of test than did subjects expecting a multiple-choice test. Internal analyses revealed that the differences on study time and test achievement between the two expectation conditions occurred only when the subjects were thoroughly acquainted with the processing requirements of the learning material and its expected test.     

The influence of decision factors on what is reported in free recall of a brief narrative

In recent research on memory for prose, attention has focused on the influence of a reader's perspective or schema on what is encoded and subsequently recalled. Previous research has revealed that subjects were able to recall previously unrecalled information if they were directed to take a new perspective during a second recall trial. This has been termed the perspective shift effect. This paper describes two possible mechanisms to account for the perspective shift effect—a retrieval process and a decision process. Two experiments which investigated the roles of these processes in the perspective shift effect are described. Experiment 1 employed an incentive to influence the subjects' criterion for reporting recalled information. Experiment 2 obtained separate estimates for decision and memory processes by applying signal detection theory. The results of both experiments provide data that tend to rule out the decision process as an important factor in the perspective shift phenomena in recall.     

Score,rank, or evaluation: Does type of performance feedback make a difference?

Three kinds of information—a score, rank, or evaluation—were presented to subjects as feedback about their performance on a task measuring financial ability. The information was given under conditions where subjects anticipated working either alone or in a group on a similar ability-relevant task. As predicted, in the alone condition favorable evaluative information produced higher ability estimates than either scores or ranks. Only under conditions of expected group interaction did rank information produce ability estimates comparable to evaluative information. Subjects receiving raw scores generally made lower ability estimates than subjects receiving the other two types of information. The selection of riskier and more difficult future tasks was associated with higher ability evaluations. Relevance of these results to pupil evaluation in a school setting was discussed.     

“Read through the test before you begin”: New support for traditional advice

After studying lists of pseudowords and their definitions, high school students were instructed to read through pseudoword vocabulary tests before beginning them in order to note which of the studied items would, in fact, be tested. When compared to students not so instructed, these students' performances were significantly better. This simple finding was explained in terms of the selective search interpretation of memory enhancement found in a directed-forgetting paradigm. The results reported here provide an important potential explanation for the effectiveness of teachers' traditional advice to students regarding the importance of a preliminary reading of test questions.     

Directed forgetting among third and seventh graders

The present studies examined the effectiveness of explicit and implicit Forget cues for enhancing memory of to-be-remembered items within a directed forgetting paradigm. Such a paradigm may be viewed as a laboratory analogue to a classroom testing situation where students read through an examination before beginning in order to cue themselves as to which information is important to remember. Subjects were third- and seventh-grade children. Evidence was provided that directed forgetting processes were operative at the time of recall so that memory enhancement did not merely reflect differential rehearsal of the to-be-remembered items during study. When easy partitioning of items into Remember and Forget sets was possible, subjects as young as third graders could benefit from postpresentation Forget cues. The data suggest that postpresentation Forget cues permit a selective search during recall and a consequent reduction in interference from to-be-forgotten items. Applications of these findings to a classroom testing situation were discussed.     

The role of stimulus salience in young children's ability to discriminate two-dimensional rotations: Reflections on a paradigm

Children's ability to discriminate reflections and rotations of visual stimuli was examined within the confines of a mental rotation task. It was hypothesized that success would be affected by both characteristics of the stimulus and by the subtlety of the discrimination required. Forty 3- to 4-year-old children were directed to mentally rotate a stimulus a given number of degrees and to discriminate the appearance of the rotated stimulus from among a set of alternatives. Four stimuli differing in the number of visual orientation cues were utilized across 24 trials. A significant effect was found for number of orientation cues, and data indicated the difficulty children experienced detecting reflections, a task which bears close resemblance to the yes/no option in prototypic rotation studies. Children were only successful with a limited range of stimuli when discrimination of a reflected foil was not required. Results are discussed in light of discrepant findings about children's kinetic imagery ability and the advisability of using this particular paradigm with young Children.