When experiences of failure promote expectations of success: The impact of attribution failure to ineffective strategies1

This experiment examined the effects of attributing initial failure to ineffective strategies on performance expectancies. Subjects were induced to attribute performance at a persuasion task to either their strategies (a controllable factor) or abilities (an uncontrollable factor). Subjects then failed at their initial persuasion attempt. Following failure, strategy subjects expected more successes in future attempts than did ability subjects. Strategy subjects also expected to improve with practice, while ability subjects did not. Comparisons to control subjects, who received no attribution manipulation prior to success or failure, clarify these results. Findings suggest that subjects attributing task outcomes to strategies monitored the effectiveness of their strategies and concluded that by modifying their strategies they would become more successful. In contrast, subjects attributing task outcome to abilities failed to attend to strategic features and concluded that they could not improve. Implications of this overlooked factor for attribution theory and learned helplessness are discussed.     

Capacity and strategy for syntactic comprehension after left or right hemidecortication

The left and right hemispheres perform different encoding and decoding operations on a syntactically complex sentence in order to identify its meaning. Hemispheric asymmetry for syntax involves not only variations in capacity, but also differences in the strategy used to effect similar language performance.     

Autonomous processes in comprehension: A reply to Marslen-Wilson and Tyler

A criterion which has been proposed for distinguishing minds from computing systems is examined from the point of view of some current work on computer induction.     

THE VALIDATION OF PROCEDURES TO ASSESS PREVOCATIONAL TASK PREFERENCES IN RETARDED ADULTS

Three severely retarded young adults between the ages of 19 and 21 years participated in a prevocational training program, and worked regularly on six different tasks during the scheduled six-hour day. The study attempted to assess each subject's preferences for the six tasks: collating, stuffing, sorting, pulley assembly, flour-sifter assembly, and circuit-board stuffing. In Phase I, the procedure consisted of randomly pairing each task with all other tasks in a two-choice situation that required the subjects to select one task from each pair combination to work for a seven-minute period. The selection procedure consisted of presenting two representative task objects on a tray and requesting the subject to pick up one object and place it on the work table. The object selected represented the task worked for that period. The 15 possible pair combinations were presented randomly every two days for a period of 34 days to determine the preferences. During the validation phase (Phase II), each subject's least- and most-preferred tasks were paired separately with moderately-preferred tasks. As expected, these manipulations confirmed the baseline data, as choices for the moderately-preferred tasks decreased when consistently paired with the preferred tasks and increased when consistently paired with the least-preferred tasks.     

Order of partial and consistent reward,reward magnitude shift,and resistance to extinction

In a separate-phase runway experiment with rats, four schedules involving partial (P) and consistent (C) reward (CC, CP, PC, and PP) were crossed with three reward magnitude shift conditions (upshift, nonshift, and downshift). The data revealed three major findings: (a) Reward magnitude downshift generally led to rapid extinction; (b) consistent reward prior to partial reward (CP) resulted in slower extinction than the reverse order (PC) under conditions of reward magnitude shift (particularly downshift); and (c) the relative performance of PC and CP under conditions of reward magnitude shift was reversed from postshift to extinction. On the basis of these data it was suggested that processes not presently identified by reinforcement level theory and stimulus analyzer theory influence extinction following separate-phase acquisition. A modification of reward level theory was presented to provide an account of extinction performance following separate-phase reward reduction.     

Sexism and Education: A Workshop to Increase Awareness

Project ASPIRE, a federally funded program, was designed to increase educators' awareness of sexual prejudice. It consisted of 64 hours of training for 32 educators, parents, and students. The training activities focused on self-awareness, the effects of sex-role stereotyping on students, the development of procedures to assess biases in instructional and counseling practices and materials, and a consideration of methods to reduce sex-role stereotyping within the school setting. A number of positive outcomes are reported. Dennis Sparks is co-director of Alternative Learning Program for the High School Age (ALPHA) for the Livonia Public Schools in Michigan. Barbara Mullally is an associate with Organizational Leadership, Inc., of East Lansing, Michigan.     

The effects of peripheral and central fixation on a Poggendorff-like vernier alignment task

Observers judged oblique line-to-dot alignments both when the oblique line abutted a vertical Inducing line (Condition E) and in the absence of the vertical line (Condition C). Five groups of 10 subjects each completed these C and E judgments under one condition of inspection. There were three major findings: (1) contrary to expectations arising from results obtained by Novak (1966), there was no difference between the condition in which observers were instructed to fixate the point at which the oblique line abutted the inducing line and the condition in which free inspection was permitted; (2) contrary to a recent report by Greist and Grier (1977), alignment errors were not eliminated in conditions involving fixation directly above or below the point of abuttal; instead, effects sirnilar to those reported by Prytulak (1973) occurred in both Conditions C and E, and these effects consequently were not significant in the corrected (E-C) difference measures; and (3) when alignment errors were converted to angular displacements, mean errors decreased linearly as a function of the distance between the tip of the oblique line and the response dot. This third finding was attributable to nonzero intercepts of error functions, and the result was considered in relation to the tenability of various hypotheses concerning the nature of abutting line effects.