Children were interviewed in two studies to compare the attribution patterns of those with and without learning problems. Normally achieving children in both studies followed the expected pattern of attributing success more internally and failure more externally. Learning disabled children did not follow the expected pattern for failure.…

The stratification of suburbs by the relative socioeconomic status of their residents is seen to be a major determinant of the degree to which they are perceived as dependent upon or autonomous from their environments. (RM)

The link between adolescent abuse, (both long- and short-term), psychological functioning, and locus of control orientation is explored. Maltreated adolescents experience low self-esteem, antisocial behavior, and suicidal tendencies. It is argued that locus of control orientation, deriving from home experiences may determine the extent of…

Compared 30 hospitalized suicidal adolescents, 34 hospitalized nonsuicidal adolescents, and 35 controls to examine factors in suicide attempts. Results showed suicidals had significantly more peer problems, a greater degree of hopelessness, and felt their families were the most maladjusted. They also experienced significantly more external locus…

In a noisy setting, college students (N=40) worked at anagrams and proofreading. Students were assigned to a perceived own control or no control condition and to a constant or increasing rate of exposure. Those who believed their rapid button-pressing produced the silence improved significantly at proofreading but not at anagrams. (Author)

Concludes that the tutorial setting may have more positive consequences for students' adjustment to the larger academic setting than traditional learning environments. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to investigate salience of overt teaching biases among pre-service teachers. Psychological and self-reported characteristics and views were examined among 114 pre-service teachers to determine whether those characteristics and views were consistent with known tendencies associated with cognitive perceptual ability.…

This study examined the hostile responses of adolescent African American males to acts of racial discrimination as a function of audience presence, noting attributions of personal control. Participants were 250 male African American students in grades 9-12 in an urban multiethnic high school who completed the Discrimination Response Index (DRI).…

A training procedure that appears to facilitate both empathic understanding and selective response to client statements is one built around the training of Zen Buddhist monks. Subjects trained in Zen techniques of external and internal concentration were found to increase their ability in these two counseling behaviors. (Author/LA)

Fifteen college students participated in a 24-hour marathon group and responded to the Internal-External Scale immediately before and after the experience. The results disclosed significant positive change at the .001 level in perceived locus of internal-external control of reinforcement expectancies in the direction of increased internality.…

Internals, but not externals, used time in a manner systematically related to item difficulty. These differences in time utilization may explain why the sense of control variable, although unrelated to ability, is a predictor of achievement test scores. (Authors/CB)

Children and teachers were observed during free-play periods to study the relationships among children's locus of control, children's behaviors, and teacher-child interactions. Results indicated no significant relationships between children's behaviors and locus of control. Teachers reinforced task and peer involvement in internal children and…

Among Nigerian secondary school boys, (1) socioeconomic background, locus of control, intelligence, and self-esteem positively affected academic achievement; (2) internal locus of control was positively correlated with intelligence, self-esteem, and academic achievement; and (3) internals (on locus of control) predicted their own academic…

Academically high-risk children who had participated in an efficacy-oriented intervention program were compared to a group of high-risk nonintervention children and a low-risk comparison group. The high-risk intervention and low-risk children had stronger beliefs in personal control over academic success; these beliefs were good predictors of…

The four studies reported in this paper examined the relationship between locus of control and (1) preferences for evaluation strategies, (2) kinds of information seen as useful in decision making, (3) values placed on the usefulness and worth of evaluation, and (4) group interaction in decision making. (BW)