Effects of model persistence and statements of confidence on children's self-efficacy and problem solving.

The influence of an adult model's degree of persistence and statements of confidence were studied with 100 1st- and 2nd-grade Black and Hispanic children from a lower-class, urban school. A male model unsuccessfully attempted to separate the 2 rings of a wire puzzle, and the child was subsequently presented a different insolvable ring puzzle to solve. A day later, the child was tested again with an insolvable embedded word puzzle. In addition to their actual persistence on the 2 tasks, the children's self-efficacy estimates were assessed at various points during the experiment. The model's long duration of performance and his statements of confidence significantly increased the children's degree of persistence on both the wire puzzle and the embedded word transfer task. These modeling treatments significantly affected the children's self-efficacy estimates as well. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to A. Bandura's (1977) theory of self-efficacy. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)