| Abstract: | Assessed the effects of individuals' proneness to cognitive interference on performance following failure. Ss responded to a questionnaire tapping proneness to cognitive interference and were exposed to either no feedback or failure. On completing these problems, Ss performed a cognitive task in which the memory load was varied systematically. The cognitive interference theory successfully predicted most of the group differences: (a) Only the performance of Ss with a habitual tendency to engage in off-task cognitions was debilitated by failure; (b) this performance impairment was only observed in performance accuracy in the high memory load version of the task; and (c) performance accuracy was associated with the frequency of off-task cognitions in the experiment. Results were discussed in terms of the cognitive interference interpretation of learned helplessness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
