Effects of attributional retraining on strategy-based reading comprehension in learning-disabled students.

Learning-disabled students received instructions about both summarization strategies and their personal beliefs about causality that were designed to improve reading comprehension. 75 upper elementary school students were assigned to 4 treatment groups. The main experimental condition received attributional retraining on paired-associate and sort-recall tasks (which were unrelated to the target comprehension tests), instructions on the use of a summarization strategy, attributional statements about the efficacy of the instructed strategy, and posttests by which we assessed reading skills and general attributional beliefs. Students in another experimental condition received an identical treatment package without prior attributional retraining on unrelated paired-associate and sort-recall tasks but with attributional statements embedded in the summarization strategy. Ss in one control condition received strategy training (without attributional retraining), whereas those in the other received neither strategy nor attribution instructions. Results suggested that attributional training enhanced the maintenance of the summarization strategy and selectivity facilitated generalization. Domain-specific attributional beliefs seemed to provide important orientating and perseverating characteristics that enhanced goal-directed, strategic processing in learning-impaired students. In spite of performance improvements, however, long-standing, antecedent attributional beliefs were unaltered by program-specific attributional training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness in task-orienting versus performance-orienting testing conditions.

Fifth- and 6th-grade subjects (Ss; 51 boys and 59 girls) were classified as low or high in effort orientation based on the number of items in the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire for which lack of effort was selected as an explanation for failure. On a computerized, 2-choice discrimination learning task, half of the Ss were given directions designed to reduce concerns about performance and to direct attention toward the task ("task-orientation" instruction condition); half were given "performance-orienting" instructions. The computer was programmed to ensure that all Ss failed to solve all four problems. Analyses of problem-solving strategies revealed that fewer low-effort-orientation Ss used effective strategies in the performance- than in the task-orienting condition. The instructions did not affect the proportion of high-effort orientation Ss who used effective strategies. The results suggest that task-orienting strategies may facilitate the performance of children who tend to de-emphasize the role of effort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How children change their minds: Strategy change can be gradual or abrupt.

This study investigated patterns of change in children's strategies for solving mathematical equivalence problems. The strategies children expressed in speech and in gesture were assessed both before and after an instructional intervention. In the intervention, children received either no input, accuracy feedback, or feedback plus instruction about a principle, an analogy, or a procedure. From pretest to posttest, many children changed both the variability of their strategy use and the content of their strategy repertoires. Patterns of change depended on type of instruction and on children's initial level of variability. Children who received instruction were especially likely to generate new strategies, and children with high variability were especially likely to abandon prior strategies. Gradual change was most common; however, many children modified their repertoires abruptly. Abrupt strategy change was especially prevalent among children who received procedure-based instruction and among children with low initial variability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of self-control training on study activity and academic performance: An analysis of self-monitoring, self-reward, and systematic-planning components.

Examined the relative efficacy of training in self-monitoring, self-reward, and planning as aids to self-control. 96 university students who, prior to treatment, did not differ on measures of scholastic achievement or study habits, were assigned to 6 groups, including a control group that received no treatment. Ss in the 5 treatment groups received training in a standard study method (SQ3R) and received different degrees of training in the components of self-control. Dependent measures included time spent studying, number of assigned study tasks completed, and change from pretreatment to posttreatment on quiz scores, GPA, and a standard measure (Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes) of study habits. Results indicate that neither training in self-monitoring alone nor self-monitoring plus self-reward techniques yielded significantly better performance than training in study methods alone. The group that received training in self-monitoring, self-reward, and planning strategies significantly outperformed other groups on nearly all measures. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of the Incredible Years parent, child, and teacher training programs on children's co-occurring internalizing symptoms.

The Incredible Years (IY) Series includes separate group interventions to improve parenting interactions, teacher classroom management, and child social-emotional regulation. Although originally developed to treat early onset conduct problems, IY targets many of the proposed mechanisms and risk factors for internalizing distress in early childhood. Prior studies have demonstrated the effects of the IY parent intervention on co-occurring depressive symptoms. We attempted to extend these findings by examining the unique and combined effects of IY interventions on children's co-occurring internalizing symptoms. One-hundred and fifty-nine families with children ages 4- to 8-years-old were randomly assigned to parent training (PT); parent plus teacher training (PT + TT); child training (CT); child plus teacher training (CT + TT); parent, child, plus teacher training (PT + CT + TT); or a waiting list control group. Children who received any of the intervention components were more likely to have lower mother-rated internalizing symptoms at posttreatment compared to children in a wait-list control group. Implications for future research and for designing interventions and prevention strategies for children with internalizing symptoms are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural variations in family beliefs about children's performance in mathematics: Comparisons among People's Republic of China, Chinese-American, and Caucasian-American families.

We examined beliefs about children's performance in mathematics through interviews with mothers and their sixth-grade children in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and in Chinese-American and Caucasian-American groups in the United States. Explanations for relatively high and low performance were indicated by attributions to ability, effort, training at home, training at school, and luck. We also asked mothers about specific instances of unusually high or low achievement. The groups showed different patterns of attributions. Mothers in the PRC viewed lack of effort as the major cause of low performance. The Chinese Americans also viewed lack of effort as important but assigned considerable responsibility to other sources. The Caucasian Americans distributed responsibility more evenly across the options. PRC mothers offered partial reinforcement to children who brought home a good grade; American mothers, both Chinese and Caucasian, were likely to offer unqualified praise. National differences in performance may occur in part because of such cultural variations in beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A theory-based approach to teaching young children about health: A recipe for understanding.

The theory–theory account of conceptual development posits that children's concepts are integrated into theories. Concept-learning studies have documented the central role that theories play in children's learning of experimenter-defined categories but have yet to extensively examine complex, real-world concepts, such as health. The present study examined whether providing young children with coherent and causally related information in a theory-based lesson would facilitate their learning about the concept of health. This study used a pretest/lesson/posttest design, plus a 5-month follow-up. Children were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: theory (i.e., 20 children received a theory-based lesson), nontheory (i.e., 20 children received a nontheory-based lesson), and control (i.e., 20 children received no lesson). Overall, the results showed that children in the theory condition had a more accurate conception of health than children in the nontheory and control conditions, suggesting the importance of theories in children's learning of complex, real-world concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effort training increases generalized self-control.

Noting that the self-control required to choose the larger of 2 available rewards usually commits a person to expend more effort than does the choice of the smaller reward, the present authors investigated 46 2nd- and 3rd-grade children's receipt of reward for low effort vs high effort as a cause of individual differences in the tendency toward generalized self-control. Baseline self-control was measured by means of repeated choices between copying nonsense words for high pay vs waiting the equivalent duration for low pay. Next, Ss were paid for high effort in tasks involving object counting, picture memory, and shape matching; were paid the same amount of money for low effort in these tasks; or did not undergo effort training. Ss who were rewarded for high effort subsequently showed greater self-control in the copying task than did the low-effort group or the no-training control group. It is concluded that individual differences in generalized self-control may depend on the previous degree and range of effort training. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Just stop thinking about it": Effects of emotional disengagement on children's memory for educational material.

Children regulate negative emotions in a variety of ways. Emotion education programs typically discourage emotional disengagement and encourage emotional engagement or "working through" negative emotions. The authors examined the effects of emotional disengagement and engagement on children's memory for educational material. Children averaging 7 or 10 years of age (N=200) watched either a sad or an emotionally neutral film and were then instructed to emotionally disengage, instructed to engage in problem solving concerning their emotion, or received no emotion regulation instructions. All children then watched and were asked to recall the details of an emotionally neutral educational film. Children instructed to disengage remembered the educational film better than children instructed to work through their feelings or children who received no emotion regulation instructions. Although past research has indicated that specific forms of emotional disengagement can impair memory for emotionally relevant events, the current findings suggest that disengagement is a useful short-term strategy for regulating mild negative emotion in educational settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Persistence in children's reading behavior as a function of N length and attribution retraining.

In an investigation using 30 children (Grades 5-7) who were experiencing reading difficulties, procedures involving partial reinforcement and attribution retraining were assessed in terms of their relative effectiveness in developing reading persistence. Two levels of a partial reinforcement variable, termed N length (the number of successive failures prior to success), were factorially combined with the presence or absence of attribution retraining. A 5th condition received success-only training. These manipulations occurred in the context of a reading task presented on 3 successive days. A posttest measure of persistence revealed that the number of difficult sentences attempted by the Ss was increased jointly by both independent variables. However, Ss receiving success-only training or partial reinforcement with nonsuccessive failure (N lengths of 1), without the benefit of attribution retraining, did not show improvement from pretest to posttest. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategy acquisition and transfer among American and German children: Environmental influences on metacognitive development.

This study explored the differential effects of strategy training on German and American elementary-school children and assessed the role of parents in the development of their children's strategic behavior and metacognition. 184 German and 161 American children were pretested on memory and metamemory tasks. Children were then assigned to either an organizational strategy training condition or a control condition. All children were tested on the maintenance and far-transfer of the strategy and task-related metamemory 1 week following training. Parents completed questionnaires about strategy instruction in the home. Strategy maintenance and metacognition were reassessed 6 months following training. German children were more strategic than American children. Instructed children performed better than control children. German parents reported more instruction of strategies in the home. These data suggest that formal education is responsible for aspects of cognitive development that have sometimes been viewed as a function of age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changing the way children "think" about aggression: Social-cognitive effects of a preventive intervention.

The study reports social-cognitive outcomes of interventions in a cluster-randomized school-based aggression prevention trial in low and moderate resource urban communities. Targeted social cognitions were aggressive responses, aggressive/prosocial fantasy, and normative beliefs supporting aggression. Participants were 1,484 early elementary school-age children selected for aggression above school medians. Schools received no treatment, curriculum plus teacher consultation (Level A), or Level A plus small-group training (Level B) over 2 years. The Level A condition changed the social cognitions supporting aggression in the desired direction but only in the moderate resource communities. The small-group component did not appear to add to the effect of the Level A condition. Findings suggest that early prevention can modify children's social cognitions in moderate resource communities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improving fourth-grade students' composition skills: Effects of strategy instruction and self-regulation procedures.

Extending S. Graham and K. R. Harris's (2003) self-regulated strategy development model, this study examined whether self-regulation procedures would increase the effectiveness of a writing strategies training designed to improve 4th graders' (N = 113) composition skills. Students who were taught composition strategies in conjunction with self-regulation procedures were compared with (a) students who were taught the same strategies but received no instruction in self-regulation and (b) students who received didactic lessons in composition. Both at posttest and at maintenance (5 weeks after the instruction), strategy plus self-regulation students wrote more complete and qualitatively better stories than students in the 2 comparison conditions. They also displayed superior performance at a transfer task requiring students to recall essential parts of an orally presented story. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Persistence and the causal perception of failure: Modifying cognitive attributions.

In a 2-phase study with a total of 159 6th graders, the relation of persistence behavior to the causal perception of failure was examined. Ss were administered a battery of tests, including the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale, a modified version of the Perceptual Reasoning Test, and a circle design task. Results of Phase 1 show that temporal persistence and resistance to extinction were positively related to the attribution of failure to insufficient effort and negatively related to attributions to ability and task difficulty by both males and females. In Phase 2, the males who least frequently attributed failure to lack of effort (42 Ss) were randomly allocated to a control group or a social reinforcement group or a token plus social reinforcement attribution retraining group. At immediate and delayed posttests, experimental Ss attributed success and failure on the training task and 2 independent transfer tasks to effort significantly more than did controls. A significant increase from pretest levels on both persistence indexes paralleled the attributional change of experimental Ss. No difference was evident in the effectiveness of the 2 experimental treatments. Despite some attenuation on the transfer tasks, there was evidence of durability of training effects, and generalization of effects to an independent tester at a further 4-mo follow-up posttest. Results provide support for the attribution model of achievement motivation and provide an empirical foundation for the rationale of attribution retraining programs. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ability versus effort attributional feedback: Differential effects on self-efficacy and achievement.

Explored the effects of ability and effort attributional feedback given during subtraction competency development on 44 3rd graders' perceived self-efficacy and achievement. Ss who were deficient in subtraction skills received training on subtraction operations and engaged in problem solving, during which they periodically received ability-attributional feedback for their progress, effort feedback, ability?+?effort feedback, or no attributional feedback. Ss given only ability feedback demonstrated the highest subtraction skill and self-efficacy; the effort and ability?+?effort conditions did not differ, but each outperformed the no-feedback condition. Future research should examine in greater detail how children process attributional information and its effects on achievement outcomes. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Increasing reading persistence and altering attributional style of learned helpless children.

28 4th–6th grade learned-helpless children (as determined by the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire and Effort Versus Ability Failure Attribution Scale) assessed as reading below grade level were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatments: (a) partial reinforcement with single failure lengths, (b) partial reinforcement with multiple failure lengths, (c) partial reinforcement with multiple failure lengths and indirect attribution retraining, and (d) partial reinforcement with multiple failure lengths and direct attribution retraining. Direct attribution retraining involved covert rehearsal of self-instructional statements. Results indicate significant increases in reading persistence for Ss who had received attribution retraining compared to single failure length controls. In addition, direct attribution retraining was significantly more effective than no attribution retraining in increasing Ss' attributions to effort on the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exclusion of children from family psychotherapy: Family therapists' beliefs and practices.

Surveyed 173 family therapists on beliefs and practices regarding the decision to exclude children from family psychotherapy (FPT). The tendency to exclude children from FPT was directly related to amount of coursework and supervision and perceived adequacy of training. 48 of 125 Ss who had received training with children reported that more than 25% of their practice involved children. Only 5 of 40 Ss who had not received such training reported this to be true. Similar results were found for adequacy of training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences and the development of perceived control

Research on individual differences demonstrates that children's perceived control exerts a strong effect on their academic achievement and that, in turn, children's actual school performance influences their sense of control. At the same time, developmental research shows systematic age-graded changes in the processes that children use to regulate and interpret control experiences. Drawing on both these perspectives, the current study examines (1) age differences in the operation of beliefs-performance cycles and (2) the effects of these cycles on the development of children's perceived control and classroom engagement from the third to the seventh grade. Longitudinal data on about 1,600 children were collected six times (every fall and spring) over 3 consecutive school years, including children's reports of their perceived control and individual interactions with teachers; teachers' reports of each student's engagement in class; and, for a subset of students, grades and achievement tests. Analyses of individual differences and individual growth curves (estimated using hierarchical linear modeling procedures) were consistent, not only with a cyclic model of context, self, action, and outcomes, but also with predictors of individual development over 5 years from grade 3 to grade 7. Children who experienced teachers as warm and contingent were more likely to develop optimal profiles of control; these beliefs supported more active engagement in the classroom, resulting in better academic performance; success in turn predicted the maintenance of optimistic beliefs about the effectiveness of effort. In contrast, children who experienced teachers as unsupportive were more likely to develop beliefs that emphasized external causes; these profiles of control predicted escalating classroom disaffection and lower scholastic achievement; in turn, these poor performances led children to increasingly doubt their own capacities and to believe even more strongly in the power of luck and unknown causes. Systematic age differences in analyses suggested that the aspects of control around which these cycles are organized change with development. The beliefs that regulated engagement shifted from effort to ability and from beliefs about the causes of school performance (strategy beliefs) to beliefs about the self's capacities. The feedback loop from individual performance to subsequent perceived control also became more pronounced and more focused on ability. These relatively linear developmental changes may have contributed to an abrupt decline in children's classroom engagement as they negotiated the transition to middle school and experienced losses in teacher support. Implications are discussed for future study of individual differences and development, especially the role of changing school contexts, mechanisms of influence, and developmentally appropriate interventions to optimize children's perceived control and engagement.     

Children's beliefs about intelligence and school performance.

The study was designed, first, to explore associations among children's beliefs about intelligence and effort, goal orientations, self-reported learning strategies, and academic achievement. Assessments of all variables were conducted twice over 1 school year on 319 children in Grades 3–6. Results indicate that the belief that intelligence is relatively fixed was associated with the beliefs that performance is relatively stable and that intelligence is global in its effects on performance. This set of beliefs was differentiated from the belief that effort has positive effects on intelligence and performance. Children's beliefs in intelligence as fixed and affecting performance were negatively associated with academic achievement, but a path analysis provided only modest support for the hypothesis that the effect of such beliefs would be mediated by a performance goal orientation and accompanying superficial learning strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's deliberateness of planning according to task circumstances.

89 children ages 4 to 9 solved mazes varying in the presumed appropriateness of advance or improvisational planning. Using a between-Ss design, children's performance was compared in a standard condition that stressed accuracy in problem solving (designed to increase the importance of advance planning to avoid errors) and a variation stressing speed (designed to favor improvisational planning). Performance was compared by varying maze structure in terms of whether errors in route choices could be identified from a search of a small portion of the maze (favoring improvisation) or from a search through the entire maze (favoring advance planning). Children's planning strategies were stable over trials and had predictable effects on error rates. Children's usage of deliberate planning strategies was related to the circumstances of the problem, with more advanced planning when the structure of the mazes and instructions favored that strategy. Children used less advance planning when speed was a consideration and when the maze structure allowed avoidance of errors without extensive search. Results show that children's planning strategies are adapted to circumstances, and suggest that older children may be more proficient in this adaptation than are younger children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)