Two rating instruments for evaluating the performance of men in Navy jobs by supervisors were developed based on the need to know how effectively men of varying ability perform different tasks. Specific Navy jobs were selected for the development of the performance instruments according to the following job factors: Highly populated,…

The increased number of marginal aptitude trainees inducted into the Army has created the need for adequately and efficiently training these men. This report presents the finding of research that compared high and low aptitude men--classified on the basis of scores from the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT)--on two form discrimination tasks…

Ninety-eight undergraduate education majors received a battery of ability tests, measuring general reasoning, associative memory, and trait anxiety and were randomly assigned to three groups--no feedback, feedback, and learner control--for a computer-assisted instruction course on Xenograde systems (an imaginary science). Four state anxiety…

Using Seligman's "learned helplessness" paradigm, androgynous and feminine women (as defined by the Bem Sex Role Inventory) either succeeded (contingent feedback) or failed (non-contingent feedback) at a concept formation task and were provided with internal (ability, effort), external (task difficulty, luck), or no causal attributions for their…

In the 1960s there developed a growing interest in and supportive evidence for programs to alter intellectual competence, particularly in young children. The abilities concept, which is used to classify people by abilities, is not well suited to teaching intellectual competencies or assessing changes in competence. A new concept, intellectual…

Traditionally, studies investigating the relationship between mental abilities tests and performance on learning tasks have attempted to establish a direct relationship between these two domains by use of factor analytic techniques. It is suggested that an alternative approach can be formulated in terms of an information processing analysis of…

A study is reported in which the effects of 2 competitive treatments on mean classroom performance, interest and retention were examined with the use of a 10-day vocabulary-learning task. Sixty-six 5th grade classrooms were randomly assigned to one of 3 conditions: (1) control; (2) competition with reward; and (3) competition in a game setting.…

An early version was read at the annual conference of the American Association on Mental Deficiency (May, 1969). (Author)