Two studies investigated treatments on the attribution and behavioral persistence of special education students (9 to 15 years old) labelled as helpless in arithmetic. In the first study (N=14), an attribution retraining treatment was effective in alleviating helplessness but not significantly more effective than a control treatment. In the second…

Frustration has been primarily investigated in relation to aggressive behaviors, but may elicit other behaviors depending on the responses available to the individual. To test the effects of task frustration and task success on subsequent group behavior, college women (N=80) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: task success, task…

Patterns of student performance were examined in a personalized instruction (PSI) course. Introductory psychology students (N=65) were randomly divided into a completely self-paced group and a group that had an early, instructor-imposed deadline. It was hypothesized that the early deadline group would respond at a more even pace throughout the…

This study examined the effects of cooperative and competitive goal structures on children's evaluations of the learning experience and on children's self-reward. Fourth-graders (n=180) were assigned to learning groups of three children each by a stratified (sex and ability) random sampling procedure. Groups were assigned to either the group…

Past research has produced conflicting results concerning the manner in which Type As and Bs make attributions following success and failure. Some studies find that Type As are more likely than Type Bs to blame themselves for all outcomes, particularly failure. Other research indicates that Type As are more self-serving in their post-performance…