High attrition in technical training courses in Army Service Schools was found to be a major problem during the years 1962 to 1965. Data obtained at the U.S. Army Air Defense School showed that students who volunteered specifically for their training had significantly lower attrition rates than students of comparable aptitude who were assigned to…

Some children exhibit a pattern of debilitating behavior characterized as helplessness. Within an achievement context, such children can be observed to initiate few constructive activities, to work with little intensity on those activities already attempted, and to persist at a task only moderately--especially following failure. A stratified…

This study evaluated the use of three systematic reinforcement techniques and measures (a carrel, teacher attention, and a contingency contract) to increase the on-task and task completion behaviors of a first-grade child. The carrel and teacher attention increased on-task behavior (from a mean of 27.6 percent to 45.0 percent) but did not affect…

The cooperative behavior of 144 children in three groups--Cuban-Americans in either private or public schools and Anglo-Americans--decreased when task instructions emphasized individual rewards. Only the Anglo-American children, who maintained a significant level of competitiveness throughout, significantly increased their competitive behavior in…

Research conducted in the United States has found that people exert more effort when they perform a task individually than when they do so in a group. This phenomenon has been labeled social loafing. To examine the transcultural generality of social loafing, 20 male and 20 female Chinese school children in Taiwan were selected from grades 2, 3, 6,…

A five-year, four-wave, longitudinal study of 2,788 youth from seven public and parochial, urban and suburban school systems in the southern tier of New York provided data, through survey questionnaires, for a comparative analysis of students entering two-year and four-year colleges, and students who terminated their formal education with a high…

This study deals with attributional theory, a factor of special concern in achievement theory, which focuses on specific behavior as caused by the subject's attributions to the perceived causes of such behavior. This study investigated whether an individual's attributional biases were predictive of task selections he or she made. Furthermore, it…