Motivational determinants of reading comprehension: A comparison of French,Caucasian–American,and African–American adolescents

The relationships between adolescents' reading comprehension and their metacognitive knowledge and self-system beliefs were studied in three groups of subjects: French nationals, Caucasian Americans, and African Americans. Subjects were tested on measures of reading comprehension, metacognitive knowledge about reading processes, attributional beliefs, and academic self-concept. Correlation and regression analyses indicated cultural differences in the predictors of reading comprehension among the three groups. For French and Caucasian Americans, reading comprehension scores were related to metacognitive knowledge, academic self-concept, and attributions of success to ability. However, metacognition and motivational beliefs were mostly unrelated to comprehension performance for African Americans. Results are discussed in terms of verification of a model of motivational influences on performance, of cultural and ethnic group differences in beliefs, and the implications for generalizability of research results.     

Spontaneous and reactive attributions following academic achievement

This paper describes two studies which deal with attributions following academic achievement. Study 1 investigated the influence of different types of instructions (spontaneous vs. reactive), self-concepts of ability (high vs. low), and outcomes (success vs. failure) on causal attributions in a school setting. Participants were 402 eighth to tenth graders. Students with a low self-concept of ability produced more attributions than students with a high self-concept. Under reactive conditions, students' attributions following success were in accordance with the self-consistency theory. Under spontaneous conditions, these students produced attributions in a self-serving way. Furthermore, success evoked more attributions than failure. In Study 2, 160 university students worked on an unfamiliar task (a computer-simulated dynamic system). The results supported the assumption that students spontaneously generate attributions to raise or at least preserve their self-esteem.     

Attributions for Success and Failure in Children of Different Social Class

Abstract

Seventh-grade male and female students (N = 60), divided on the basis of socioeconomic status, were asked to attribute causes to their success or failure on a block-design measure after having experienced solvable, unsolvable, or no pretreatment problems. Differences in use of attributions to ability, effort, task ease, and luck factors were analyzed. The results failed to support the hypothesis that social class groups would differ in their use of attributions in response to success. Subjects were more clearly differentiated, however, in their choice of attributions for failure, with lower class failing students less prone to ascribe their outcome to unstable causes than middle-class failing students.     

Attributional feedback-induced changes in functional and dysfunctional attributions,expectations of success,hopefulness, and short-term persistence in a novel sport

ObjectiveThis experiment investigated the influence of functional and dysfunctional attributional feedback on causal attributions, expectations of success, emotions, and short-term persistence during failure in a novel sport.MethodsThirty novice golfers who made either dysfunctional or functional attributions for failure in a pre-test were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups: (1) functional (i.e., internal, controllable, and unstable) attributional feedback; (2) dysfunctional (i.e., external, uncontrollable, and stable) attributional feedback; or (3) non-attributional feedback. Participants completed four test trials (all involving failure) consisting of six putts each. The feedback was administered after the second test trial.ResultsAnalysis of the pre- and post-intervention measures of attributions, expectations of success, affective reactions, and behavioral persistence revealed that the attributional feedback-induced changes related to the type of feedback. Functional attributional feedback produced improvements in causal attributions about failure, as well as in success expectations, hopefulness, and persistence after failure. In contrast, dysfunctional attributional feedback produced deterioration in causal attributions about failure, and lower success expectations, hopefulness, and persistence after failure. The effects of the attributional feedback overrode individuals’ initial functional or dysfunctional attributions about failure; that is, improvement or deterioration depended on the type of feedback received rather than the initial attributions.ConclusionsThe findings demonstrate that it is possible to change the persistence behavior of individuals in a novel athletic domain by changing the attributions they make about failure. The findings show that those in positions of giving attributional feedback to sports’ novices (e.g., coaches) could produce cognitive, emotional, and behavioral improvements by using functional attributional feedback about failure.     

Sex differences in children's attributions for success and failure on math and spelling tests

Sex differences in children's attributions for success and failure were tested on a group of 165 fifth and sixth graders taking a regularly scheduled math and spelling test in their classroom. Pretest questionnaires measured students' self-perceptions of competence in the subject and their performance expectations on the test. Questionnaires, given after the corrected tests were returned, assessed students' actual performance, subjective ratings of success, attributions for the cause of their success or failure, and performance expectations for future tests. Results indicated that sex differences existed in math but not in spelling: compared to girls, boys perceived themselves to be more competent and did better on the math test. Boys were also less likely to attribute failure on the math test to lack of ability and more likely to attribute success to ability than were girls.     

Parent perceptions and attributions for children's math achievement

From junior high school on, girls report lower estimations of their math ability and express more negative attitudes about math than do boys, despite equivalent performance in grades. Parents show this same sex-typed bias. This paper examines the role that attributions may play in explaining these sex differences in parents' perceptions of their children's math ability. Mothers and fathers of 48 junior high school boys and girls of high, average, and low math ability completed questionnaires about their perceptions of their child's ability and effort in math, and their causal attributions for their child's successful and unsuccessful math performances. Parents' math-related perceptions and attributions varied with their child's level of math ability and gender. Parents credited daughters with more effort than sons, and sons with more talent than daughters for successful math performances. These attributional patterns predicted sex-linked variations in parents' ratings of their child's effort and talent. No sex of child effects emerged for failure attributions; instead, lack of effort was seen as the most important, and lack of ability as the least important, cause of unsuccessful math performances for both boys and girls. Implications of these attributions for parents' influence on children's developing self-concept of math ability, future expectancies, and subsequent achievement behaviors are discussed.This paper is based on a master's thesis by the first author. This research was funded by grants to Jacquelynne S. Eccles from the following agencies: the Foundation for Child Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Child Health and Development.We wish to express our thanks to Linda Buford, Sandra Hamman, and Samuel D. Miller, who helped collect and code these data, and especially to the parents, students, and teachers in the Ann Arbor Public School district, whose cooperation made this project possible.     

Effort is virtuous,but it's better to have ability: Evaluative responses to perceptions of effort and ability

Evaluative responses to imagined task outcomes were found to depend on the question asked, as well as on perceptions of effort and ability. When university students were asked when they would experience pride or shame, they indicated effort would increase pride over success and reduce shame over failure. On the other hand, when asked what type of person they would like to be they chose high ability regardless of outcome. This modified Weiner's (1972) statement of the relation of causal attributions and affective expression. Individual differences in responses to these questions related to differences in self-concept of ability. This result suggested extensions of the attributional analysis of achievement motivation.     

The influence of motivational and emotional factors in mathematical learning in secondary education

IntroductionWhile motivation has, for decades, been investigated as a key component of academic learning and performance, academic emotions have often been left out of the scope of investigation. According to several researchers, mathematics learning seems to be particularly affected by students’ emotions.ObjectiveThis paper is aimed at characterizing the emotions and motivation of eighth grade students in a mathematical setting and highlighting the cluster of emotions–activity emotions vs outcome emotions–which best predict math value, math self-concept, behavioral engagement and math performance.MethodData were collected through questionnaires from 115 students and analyzed through means comparisons and linear regressions.ResultsResults indicated that eighth grade students give a relatively high value to mathematics have a positive mathematics self-concept and are moderately engaged in mathematical tasks. Regression analysis showed that mathematics value and behavioral engagement are better explained by activity emotions while mathematics self-concept and performance are better predicted by outcome emotions.ConclusionThe implications of these findings in terms of educational practices are discussed at the end of this study.     

Book review

Long-standing beliefs about one's self-efficacy and learning ability accumulate over the school years. Attributions, or causal perceptions and interpretations, of behavioural outcomes are also based on a person's learning history. And, it is evident from research on attributional bias and self-esteem that the perceived causes of success and failure have consequences for academic success. An important perspective on attributions, frequently neglected in educational research, pertains to content-specific beliefs about one's competence. We set up a field study in which students from the first form of secondary education were asked to report their causal attributions of regular school examinations in three school subjects: history, native language, and mathematics. The results suggest that students generate different causal attributions for successful or unsuccessful examinations, belonging to different school-subjects. Perception of specific examination conditions may or may not urge students to generate specific attributions. There is evidence for both school-subject specificity and examination-specificity in the observed causal attributions. But, the effect of school-subject seems to be more pronounced than the effect of examination. Information at the momentary level (examination conditions) interacts with information at the middle level (school-subject). Closer analyses of the observed causal attributions vis-à-vis perceived success and failure in the three school-subjects displayed marked differences, especially in relation to the effort attributions.     

Sex differences in attributions and learned helplessness

This investigation assessed the hypothesis that girls are more likely to be learned helpless in math than boys. Students in grades 5 through 11 completed questionnaires assessing their causal attributions for success and failure in mathematics, their self-concepts of math ability, and their expectations for both current and future success in math. Results indicated that sex differences in attributions depended on the type of methodology used (open-ended or rank-ordered questions). The most consistent difference involved the differential use and ranking of ability, skills, and consistent effort. No sex differences were found in either students' perceptions of their own math ability or in their current achievement expectations. Girls, however, rated their future expectations slightly lower than did boys. Taken together, these results provide little support for the hypothesis that girls are generally more learned helpless in mathematics than are boys.     

Factors Affecting the Self-Concepts of South African Students

Abstract

Relationships among family macrosocial structures, proximate family settings, attributions of responsibility, and African adolescents' self-concepts were examined. Data were collected from 460 South African high school students (234 girls, 226 boys; mean age = 18.6 years). On the basis of partial least squares path modeling, the results suggest that (a) family macrosocial structure, proximate family settings, and the individual's sense of responsibility for academic outcomes had modest to strong associations with different dimensions of self-concept; and (b) there were gender-related differences in the structure of the adolescents' social status backgrounds and self-concepts and in the relationships among social status, perceptions of parents' support for learning, personal responsibility, and self-concept.     

Locus of Control and Success as a Professional Money Collector

Abstract

In this examination of how attributions and types of situation influence emotions, 46 American undergraduates completed a questionnaire consisting of 12 vignettes that varied according to content, outcome, and attribution. After reading each vignette, they indicated how they would feel in the situation described. In a second experiment, 27 Finnish undergraduates participated in an identical procedure. In both experiments, subjects felt more pride and happiness after they attributed a successful achievement to effort or ability rather than to others' influence. Attributions of affiliative success did not influence emotions. Subjects felt the most shame and guilt after they attributed achievement failure to lack of effort, and they felt the least negative emotions after they attributed affiliative failure to lack of effort.     

Differences in Attributions for Public and Private Face-to-face and Cyber Victimization Among Adolescents in China,Cyprus, the Czech Republic,India, Japan,and the United States

ABSTRACT

The authors' aim was to investigate gender and cultural differences in the attributions used to determine causality for hypothetical public and private face-to-face and cyber victimization scenarios among 3,432 adolescents (age range = 11–15 years; 49% girls) from China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, and the United States, while accounting for their individualism and collectivism. Adolescents completed a questionnaire on cultural values and read four hypothetical victimization scenarios, including public face-to-face victimization, public cyber victimization, private face-to-face victimization, and private cyber victimization. After reading the scenarios, they rated different attributions (i.e., self-blame, aggressor-blame, joking, normative, conflict) according to how strongly they believed the attributions explained why victimization occurred. Overall, adolescents reported that they would utilize the attributions of self-blame, aggressor-blame, and normative more for public forms of victimization and face-to-face victimization than for private forms of victimization and cyber victimization. Differences were found according to gender and country of origin as well. Such findings underscore the importance of delineating between different forms of victimization when examining adolescents' attributions.     

Attribution theory and unemployment: Kelley's covariation model,self-esteem,and locus of control

The validity of applying Kelley, 1967, Kelley, 1973, 28, 107–128) to understanding the perceived causes of success and failure of others' job seeking activities was first tested in a laboratory study before testing the same theory on the self-attributions made by 82 unemployed in a field study. The field study also examined the relationship of self-esteem and locus of control to attributions for success and failure. In general Kelley's theory was supported by the results from the laboratory study but only two of the twelve predicted relationships were found in the field study. Low distinctiveness (weak workrelated skills) was associated with strong attributions to lack of ability and low consistency (past job seeking activities successful) with strong attributions to bad luck. As predicted the unemployed with high self-esteem and an internal locus of control attributed failure to lack of effort and credited their success to ability. Unemployed with low self-esteem and an external locus of control attributed success to unstable factors, but failure was not attributed to lack of ability. Possible reasons offered for the lack of support for Kelley's theory in the field study included the influence of group identity, individual differences in the perception of the stability and locus of causes, the greater realism of the field setting, and the inadequacy of the assumptions underlying the model.     

Motor ability and self-esteem: The mediating role of physical self-concept and perceived social acceptance

ObjectivesOne important issue in sport and exercise psychology is to determine to what extent sports and exercise can help to increase self-esteem, and what the underlying mechanism might be. Based on the exercise and self-esteem model (EXSEM) and on findings from the sociometer theory, the mediating effect of physical self-concept and perceived social acceptance on the longitudinal relationship between motor ability and self-esteem was investigated.DesignLongitudinal study with three waves of data collection at intervals of ten weeks each.Method428 adolescents (46.3% girls, M_age = 11.9, SD = .55) participated in the study, in which they performed three motor ability tests and completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires for physical self-concept and perceived social acceptance, as well as for self-esteem, at all three measuring points.ResultsUsing structural equation modelling procedures, the multiple mediation model revealed both physical self-concept and perceived social acceptance to be mediators between motor ability and self-esteem in the case of boys. In girls, on the other hand, the mediation between motor ability and self-esteem only takes place via physical self-concept.ConclusionsGender differences in the relationship between motor ability and self-esteem suggest gender-specific interventions aimed at promoting self-concept.     

Adaptive thinking: Can adaptive dispositional attributions protect against the harmful effects of maladaptive situational attributions?

ObjectivesThe study was designed to examine if dispositional team-referent attributions moderate relationships between situational team-referent attributions and collective efficacy.DesignIn this cross-sectional design investigation, team athletes completed measures of dispositional team-referent attributions, situational team-referent attributions, and collective efficacy. Team outcome (i.e., win-loss status) was recorded.MethodAthletes (N = 163) on sport teams (K = 17) completed a measure of dispositional team-referent attributions (i.e., attributional style). They also completed a measure of situational team-referent attributions in reference to their most recent team competition and a measure of collective efficacy in reference to their next upcoming team competition.ResultsFollowing team victory, simple slopes analysis revealed a moderating effect such that adaptive dispositional team-referent attributions appeared to protect against the effects of maladaptive situational team-referent attributions on collective efficacy. This trend was demonstrated across stability and globality attribution dimensions. Following team defeat, no significant interaction effects were observed.ConclusionsThe results suggest that developing adaptive dispositional attributions after success may protect athletes from experiencing deleterious effects of maladaptive situational attributions. Future research is needed to confirm these results and understand how these results can be applied to attributional retraining interventions in sport.     

The Self-Serving Bias and the Use of Objective and Subjective Methods for Measuring Success and Failure

Abstract

Students (N = 45) were asked to judge their recent exam performance on a success versus failure rating scale. They were also asked to make causal attributions for their test performance on an internal versus external scale. The students' scores were divided into success and failure groups by using both subjective (self-reported outcome) and objective (actual exam scores) definitions of outcome. For both methods, the success group had higher internal attributions for their performance than did the failure group. The effect size for the subjective methods of defining outcome, however, produced a stronger self-serving bias that did the objective definition.     

The Relationship of Gender, Gender-Related Traits, and Achievement Orientation to Achievement Attributions: A Study of Subject-Selected Accomplishments

ABSTRACT Female and male college students (N= 251 and 84, respectively) described important accomplishments in their lives and reported attributions for the causes of their success Regression analyses indicated that, as predicted, students' gender explained a small portion of the variance in attributions, and the goals and performance standards of the students' achievement experiences (achievement orientations) accounted for more variance in attributions than did the other predictors Further analyses showed that the domains of students' accomplishments affected their attributions to effort luck, and ability, and that students' achievement goals and performance evaluation standards predicted their attributions to task difficulty, effort, and ability Researchers are urged to explore attributions made concerning self-selected achievements, and to focus on variables other than sex in their search for the determinants of achievement attributions     

British Olympic hopefuls: The antecedents and consequences of implicit ability beliefs in elite track and field athletes

ObjectivesThis study provided an in-depth examination of the implicit ability beliefs held by elite British track and field athletes, including the antecedents and consequences of these beliefs.Design and MethodsA qualitative design was employed involving semi-structured interviews with 4 Olympic hopefuls in the sport of track and field athletics. Thematic analysis was utilised to interpret the results of the study, involving a combination of inductive and deductive approaches.ResultsThe core components of ability beliefs included beliefs that ability is stable, ability is malleable, and that it is possible to build on natural ability. A variety of personal, social and environmental antecedents appeared to influence the athletes' ability beliefs. The consequences of implicit beliefs encompassed three major themes, which were achievement motivation, setbacks and attributions for success and failure.ConclusionsThe results from the analysis indicated that the athletes' implicit beliefs were very specific, as their beliefs about ability appeared to underpin sport-specific performance. The belief that ability was malleable was universal amongst the athletes and this may be related to their age, experience, high perceived ability and the high level at which they compete. However, the athletes believed that although natural ability is useful, talent is only a small part of the equation as learning, improving and working hard are all necessary for success at the highest level.     

The Double-Edged Sword of Self-Handicapping: Discounting,Augmentation, and the Protection and Enhancement of Self-Esteem

A field study was conducted to test the hypothesis that discounted and augmented ability self-attributions mediate the interactive effects of claimed self-handicaps and academic success and failure on self-esteem. College students were assessed for individual differences in self-handicapping and self-esteem at the beginning of the term and then completed a checklist of claimed self-handicaps immediately preceding their first in-class exam. At the following class, graded exams were returned to the students, who then completed measures of mood, self-esteem, and performance attributions. High self-handicappers claimed more excuses prior to the test. Among failing students, claimed handicaps were associated with greater discounting of ability attributions and higher self-esteem. Among successful students, claimed handicaps were associated with augmented ability attributions and enhanced self-esteem. However, we failed to find support for sex differences in claimed self-handicapping. The implications of the present research with regard to the functional utility of self-handicapping behavior are discussed.