Effect of probability of forthcoming success on sex differences in goal setting: A test of the fear of success hypothesis.

96 college females and 95 college males were randomly assigned to either a high or a low subjective probability of outstanding performance condition. Half of each group was presented a digit symbol task under sex-appropriate instructions and half under sex-inappropriate instructions. After receiving feedback of their initial performance, Ss set goals for future performance. The effect of sex, task appropriateness, and subjective probability of outstanding performance on discrepancy score (goal minus past performance) was tested. Significant main effects were found for Sex and Subjective Probability: males and Ss in the low probability condition produced larger discrepancy scores. Also, a significant Sex * Probability interaction was found: Females produced smaller discrepancy scores than males in the low subjective probability condition only. The task appropriateness variable had no effect on discrepancy score size. Findings are contrary to predictions based on the fear of success hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Checking it out: Cognitive style, context, and problem type in children's monitoring of text comprehension.

Three experiments investigated the effects of age, context, and reflection–impulsivity (as assessed by the Matching Familiar Figures Test) on children's monitoring of comprehensibility problems in extended passages. In Exp I with 20 kindergartners and 20 2nd graders, reflective listeners were generally more effective detectors of referentially ambiguous terms in brief texts than were their impulsive agemates. Presence of a perceptual context for the messages significantly facilitated Ss' ambiguity detection as well. Exp II replicated the perceptual-context effect for 20 1st graders but failed to find any effects of cognitive style. In Exp III, 72 1st, 3rd, and 6th graders heard stories with several types of coherence problems, including referential confusions or global text-organization problems (missing story themes or resolutions). Half the Ss anticipated retelling the stories, and half did not. No effects of this listener–purpose manipulation were observed. More reflective listeners again detected referential ambiguities more readily overall, but this cognitive style effect did not extend to other types of message problems. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sampling of similar and dissimilar comparison persons and objects as a function of the generality of attribution goal.

Conducted an information-search procedure in which Ss were asked to seek information regarding persons and objects in order to validate a given person or object cause. Four hypotheses were tested: When asked to validate a person cause, Ss are more likely to select distinctiveness information than target-object consensus information. When asked to validate an object cause, Ss are more likely to select target-object consensus information than distinctiveness information. As the generality of person inference increases, progressively dissimilar object comparisons are sought. As the generality of object inference increases, progressively dissimilar person comparisons are sought. In Exp I, 26 undergraduates read attitude statements and answered judgment goals or questions about the statement's generality or object inference. 52 undergraduates in Exp II completed a similar task. The first 3 hypotheses were supported in both Exp I and Exp II, whereas the 4th hypothesis received only mixed support in Exp I and was not supported in Exp II. Unlike Exp I, Exp II did not include cues suggesting the relevant type of information to be sought. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of fear of success on intrinsic motivation, causal attribution, and choice behavior.

Examined the extent to which fear of success (FOS) moderates effects of choice and task outcomes on intrinsic motivation, causal attribution, and subsequent choice behavior. 139 undergraduates worked either on puzzles of their choice or puzzles that were assigned to them and were then informed that they had performed either better or worse than the majority of other Ss. Measures of intrinsic motivation (task engagement during a free-choice period) and of attribution for performance were obtained. Ss then indicated how much choice they wanted to have over similar tasks that they were going to perform. Finally, Ss completed the Fear of Success Scale and a resultant achievement motivation measure. Results show that following success, low FOS Ss (in comparison to high FOS Ss) showed higher intrinsic motivation, made more internal attributions, and wanted to have more choice if initially they had been given choice and less choice if initially they had been given no choice. There were no significant differences between low and high FOS Ss following failure. Results could not be accounted for by resultant achievement motivation that was unrelated to FOS. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How demonstrated comprehension can get muddled in production.

The discourse skills of 31 low-income and 30 middle-income kindergarten children (mean ages 5 yrs 2 mo and 5 yrs 4 mo) from the same classrooms were examined in 2 experiments. In each experiment a nonverbal demonstration of comprehension of the discourse material was assured before Ss were asked to express that same material verbally to another child. In Exp I, Ss were read stories that they acted out with props. When comprehension was assured they were asked to paraphrase the story to another. In Exp II, Ss were either shown or instructed verbally how to open an attractive box. When comprehension was assured they were asked to teach the "trick" to a blindfolded adult. Results from both experiments indicate that although it took the low-income Ss somewhat longer to comprehend the information, the greatest difference between the groups was in the ability to communicate information that they already knew. Low-income Ss produced less relevant information on both tasks, although this did not appear to be related to linguistic complexity or sheer output. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Awareness of prior success or failure: A critical factor in task performance.

Exp I, with 36 undergraduates, determined the effects of 2 levels of history of success (high or low) and the presence or absence of an audience on task performance. Results show that after prior failure, alone Ss performed significantly better than audience Ss, although after prior success, the performance of alone and audience Ss did not differ. These results counter K. J. Good's (1973) results, since his experiment produced a social facilitation effect after prior success, not after prior failure. Performance differences were probably due to differences in audience awareness. In the present experiment, the audience was presumably unaware; whereas in Good's experiment, the audience was presumably aware of S's prior performance level. Exp II (60 Ss) tested the merits of this explanation. Ss with a history of success or failure performed either alone or in 1 of 2 audience manipulations. Ss were told that the audience was either aware or unaware of their prior performance level. Results support the hypothesis. It is argued than an audience can affect the type of standard that an S uses to evaluate performance and that the quality of an S's performance is a function not only of the criterion but also of S's expectation of meeting the criterion (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cues and examiner influence on two Wechsler subtests.

Studied the effects of cues on the WISC and the Wechsler-Bellevue Scale in 2 experiments. In Exp. I 170 adolescent Ss received the Block Design subtest, and results showed that 1 cue/item did not significantly affect performance on the initial or repeated administration. In Exp. II 146 adolescent Ss received the Block Design and Picture Arrangement subtests, and results showed that a series of cues/item significantly raised scores on both the initial and repeated administrations of both subtests. Test-form order significantly affected scores, while subtest order and Es did not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of depression on structural aspects of the recall of prose.

Investigated depressed patients' memory for stories. This indicated that although normal Ss showed particularly good recall for units central to the structure of the story, this did not hold for depressed Ss. In contrast, effects of centrality were comparable in high- and low-IQ Ss and effects of imageability of story units were comparable in both depressed and normal Ss. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that depressed patients do not use structure to organize stories when encoding them. A failure to identify central aspects of material and selectively recall them is likely to be a handicap to everyday functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nursery rhymes and prose passages: Preschoolers' liking and short-term retention of story events.

In Exps I–IV, 128 3–5 yr old preschoolers listened to stories told in either prose or verse form and then answered recognition or recall questions about each narrative's content. Ss also indicated their liking of the story on a 3-point scale. Even though Ss reported liking stories better in verse than in prose form, results demonstrate that Ss' overall short-term retention of story events was significantly higher for prose than for verse presentations. Although 40 college students in Exp V showed higher recall of the rhyming than prose passages, no overall facilitation for rhyme was found with preschoolers, even when recognition of only the rhyming facets of a narration was tested. Results are discussed in terms of a levels-of-processing approach to memory functioning. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Story comprehension and recall in learning-disabled versus normal college students.

24 learning-disabled (LD) and 24 normal college students rated stories on the importance of their idea units. LD Ss showed significantly less agreement on their importance ratings than the normal Ss. Ss also selected 12 idea units as retrieval cues, one group before and the other after recall. This task showed that normal Ss selecting cues after recall used a different strategy than those selecting cues before recall; LD Ss did not vary their cue-selection strategy as a function of experience. In spite of these differences, recall increased significantly at higher importance levels for both ability groups, and recall did not differ for LD and normal Ss who selected retrieval cues after recall. Cue selection before recall, however, depressed performance of LD Ss relative to that of the normal Ss. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of children's use of a story schema to retrieve information.

In Exp I, 80 2nd and 6th graders and 40 college students heard normal or scrambled stories and either recalled them exactly as heard or recalled them by making them into "good" stories. Scrambled stories generally depressed recall; 2nd graders performed poorly, but there was a clear improvement with age/grade in the ability to reorganize a scrambled story. In Exp II, an explanation for 2nd graders' poor performance was proposed and tested with 24 additional 2nd graders. It was thought that 2nd graders might know the form of an ideal story, but fail to spontaneously and consciously use their knowledge of its constituent parts to guide retrieval. A brief training procedure was introduced to teach a new group of 2nd graders how to sequence story propositions. The expectation was that training would prime them to use the internal story structure as a retrieval strategy when faced with a set of scrambled stories to recall (in good order). The expectation was confirmed. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contingency judgments by depressed college students: Sadder but not always wiser.

Three experiments with 296 undergraduates examined depressed and nondepressed (Beck Depression Inventory) Ss' perceptions of control over outcomes in a task similar to the one introduced by L. B. Alloy and L. Y. Abramson (see record 1981-02686-001). In Exp I, when Ss completed a contingency learning task with no one else present, nondepressed Ss perceived themselves to have more control over frequently occurring response-independent outcomes than did depressed Ss, which replicated Alloy and Abramson's finding. When Ss completed the task in the presence of an observer, depressed students perceived themselves to have more control than did nondepressed Ss. In Exp II, the observer effects found in Exp I were replicated; the present authors also showed that, when response-independent outcomes occurred relatively infrequently, depressed and nondepressed Ss who completed the task in the presence of an observer did not reliably differ in their estimates of personal control. In Exp III, the pattern of results found in Exps I and II was replicated under conditions in which observers were present while Ss received frequently occurring outcomes. Overall findings demonstrate that the consistently accurate personal control estimates of depressed Ss that have been found across a variety of situations break down when Ss complete a contingency learning task in the presence of an observer, and outcomes occur independently of response at a high frequency. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ontogeny of thermal and olfactory determinants of huddling in the rat.

In Exp I, in standardized tests of huddling behavior, 64 5-, 10-, 15-, and 20-day-old Sprague-Dawley rat pups spent substantial and equivalent amounts of time with an immobile rat or a heated, fur-covered tube, which suggests that the conspecific and inanimate stimuli were equally attractive to the pups. In Exp II, with 32 Ss, 2-choice preference tests showed developmental differences in attraction. Younger Ss preferred to huddle with the warmer, inanimate target, whereas older Ss preferred the conspecific. The emergent conspecific preference appears mediated by attraction to species odors. In Exp III (64 Ss), the 5- and 10-day-olds huddled equally with an immobile rat and an immobile gerbil (stimuli with similar thermal and tactile properties), but older Ss preferred the conspecific. In Exp IV, with 16 15-day-old and 16 20-day-old Ss, intranasal zinc sulfate treatment eliminated preference for the conspecific but did not disrupt huddling per se. Results from all experiments show that thermal cues were sufficient to elicit huddling at all ages, but olfactory cues became a more salient influence before weaning. An ontogenetic transition from "physiological" to "filial" huddling is discussed in terms of changes in sensory control of early behavior. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of performance attributions on others' perceptions of the attributor.

Two studies investigated the effects that performers' attributions actually have on others' impressions. 441 undergraduates served as Ss. "Self-serving" internal attributions for success and external attributions for failure produced slightly higher ability evaluations than did the opposite pattern in 1 of the 2 experiments. However, in both experiments, these self-serving attributions produced lower ratings on a modesty dimension. External attributions were also perceived as relatively dishonest for all Ss in Exp I and for unsuccessful Ss in Exp II. Publicity (Exp I) and task variables (Exp II) did not affect ability, modesty, or honesty judgments made from performance attributions but did strongly affect the influence these dimensions had on overall likability evaluations. In general, Ss who made internal attributions tended to be better liked than those who made external attributions. The implications and limitations of these results are discussed relative to self-presentational considerations. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory connections between thematically similar episodes.

Investigated the use of cross-episode connections (i.e., when 2 episodes with a shared theme are connected through a thematic structure) in comprehension and memory in 6 experiments with 106 undergraduates. Results from the use of a priming technique in Exps I and II indicate that verification time for a test sentence from 1 story was speeded by an immediately preceding test sentence from a thematically similar story but only when Ss were given instructions to rate the similarities of the stories. In Exp III–VI, a single test sentence was presented immediately after a story was read, with timing controlled by presenting the story one word at a time. Response time for a test sentence from a previously read story was facilitated if the immediately preceding story was thematically similar but only if the previously read story was extensively prestudied. It is concluded that during reading of an episode, thematic information may be encoded to lead to activation of similar episodes and formation of connections in memory between episodes, but such encoding is not automatic and depends on Ss' strategies and task difficulty. Sample stories are appended. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A homeostatic model of Pavlovian conditioning: Tolerance to scopolamine-induced adipsia.

In Phase 1 of Exp I, with 60 male Sprague-Dawley rats, Ss given access to water while under the influence of scopolamine developed adipsic tolerance, but Ss denied access to water in the drug state did not. In Phase 2, Ss displayed adipsic tolerance only when scopolamine was administered with cues associated with previous drug injections. In Phase 3, adipsic-tolerant Ss showed a polydipsic response to an injection of phenobarbital relative to nontolerant Ss with the same pharmacological history. In Exp II, with 48 male Sprague-Dawley rats, the effect of deprivation level on the Pavlovian extinction of adipsic tolerance was assessed. Ss satiated with water during extinction showed a loss of adipsic tolerance, but water-deprived Ss did not. The proposed model is discussed in relation to (1) tolerance in other response systems such as morphine analgesia, (2) theories of extinction for nonpharmacological Pavlovian conditioning, and (3) homeostatic regulation and incentive motivation. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Learned helplessness" or "learned incompetence"?

Most experiments on learned helplessness (LH) have not dissociated contingency from success, a procedure that has led to the belief that uncontrollability (noncontingency) is the determining feature of LH. Actually, it is not clear whether uncontrollability or failure is responsible for the LH effect, nor is it clear which of these 2 factors would be sufficient to induce the deficits found. This confusion was examined in the present 2 experiments with 80 undergraduates, who completed Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale, a pretreatment task (a concept formation task in Exp I and a task based on the Revised Minnesota Paper Form Board Test in Exp II), and an aftereffect task (Stroop Color–Word Test). Results suggest that uncontrollability is not a necessary or sufficient condition for producing LH. Both contingent and noncontingent Ss who experienced failure in a pretreatment task subsequently displayed deficits on tasks that did not require a problem-solving strategy. Noncontingent Ss who experienced success did not show performance decrement. It is proposed that "learned incompetence" may better account for what is experienced in this type of experiment. (French summary) (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mind over matter: Perceived success at psychokinesis.

Four experiments with 212 undergraduates showed that Ss' estimates of success on a psychokinetic (PK) task were independent of actual performance. In Exp I, Ss given a positive introductory set or no set about PK evidenced more illusory control than Ss given a negative set. In Exp II, both degree of general belief in psychic phenomena and the number of practice trials that Ss received influenced performance estimates, with high believers who received 10 practice trials providing the highest estimates and low believers who received 1 practice trial the lowest. In Exp III, Ss actively involved with the PK task judged their performance more positively than passively involved Ss. Exp IV showed that when they were actively involved in the task, Ss with an internal locus of control (Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale) gave higher estimates of their success than Ss with an external locus of control. When passively involved, internals and externals did not reliably differ in their estimates, but their estimates were lower in those of active/internals. Results support E. J. Langer's illusion-of-control theory and highlight the importance of general psychic belief and locus-of-control orientation in affecting perceived success at a psychic task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's emotional attributions to self versus other: An exploration of an assumption underlying projective techniques.

Examined the assumption that children attribute socially undesirable or conflictual affects to ambiguous characters that they ordinarily censure when attributing affect to themselves. The quality and intensity of 72 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders' emotional attributions to themselves and to others as characters in affect-laden stories were examined. Each of 5 stories was told twice, once using "you" as the subject of the story and once using an ambiguous character named Mary or John as the subject of the story. Results indicate that Ss attributed a greater number of sad and scared responses and fewer happy responses to the other than to the self. More intense responses were attributed to the other than to the self. Boys attributed more intensely happy and less intensely scared responses to characters than girls did. Results partially confirm the assumption underlying projective techniques and are discussed with reference to the development of children's defenses, to social desirability, and to developmental studies of empathy. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)