The strategies college students use to retain material that is low in meaningfulness were studied. Participants were 149 undergraduate teacher-training students in human development and learning classes. Students randomly received and were asked to memorize one of three 15-item lists: nonsense syllables, unrelated words, or related words. A brief…

The idea that schooling socialization practices may influence students' self-regulated learning through their effects on attributions and perceived self-efficacy is discussed, focusing on students' beliefs about their abilities. From an attributional perspective, ability is generally viewed as a relatively fixed quality, but researchers have begun…

Calibration, defined as the accuracy with which students can predict their own performance, was studied. The role of feedback in the development of calibration was examined, and questions of whether better calibration was associated with better performance and more efficient study were explored. Subjects were 136 college students in an…

This study explored the effects of type of behavioral treatment and living environment on college students' (N=216) person-perceptions and causal attributions of deviant behaviors of a 17-year-old with mental retardation or normal intelligence. The results suggested that positive behavioral approaches and normalized community settings, at least as…

Based on S. Chaffee and J. McLeod's coorientation model of communication, this paper addresses the question of individual and cognitive versus social and communicational comparisons in order to further elaborate the theory behind the coorientation model. The paper argues that, in a situation which includes two individuals and a topic, both…

This study compares and contrasts the following variables on the types of attributions (ability, effort, environment, and task) students make for their performance in algebra: attributions by gender and gender identification; attributions by level of math anxiety and self esteem; attributions by experience in competitive activities; and…

The consistency of gender differences in attributions for success in two subject areas representing verbal and mathematical tasks was investigated. English and social science were used to represent verbal tasks and mathematics the computational task. In natural classroom settings, a total of 1,110 community college students completed a…

Although it is commonly held that environmental, social, and psychological factors influence health, specific causal models of these influences are rarely tested directly. Methods of structural analysis were applied to the problem of the relationships among variables thought to influence the health status of college students. Data were collected…

This investigation was designed (l) to assess to what causal factors Brazilian elementary students attribute their success or failure in achievement tasks; (2) to verify whether their attributions can be classified into the categories proposed by Weiner (1972): ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck; and (3) to assess the relationship between…

Early detection and measurement of the intensity of childhood depression are important concerns for those treating depressed children. To examine issues of childhood depression, a review of the research was conducted which focused on: (1) childhood depression scales and their effectiveness; (2) correlates and antecedents of childhood depression;…

In the literature on differences between Asian and White achievement in mathematics, effort, and ability have been cited as causal variables. Effort is emphasized more by the Asian students and their parents, but ability is emphasized more by Americans than by Asians. This study compared the attributional patterns of Asian Americans and White…

Changing a health behavior and maintaining a positive change can be very difficult. This study examined attributions for health behavior change by using retrospective reports to elicit college students' (N=466) current views of successes and failures at adopting health promoting behaviors. In completing the Health Behavior Questionnaire, 229…

A study was conducted to determine how children in preschool/kindergarten and third/fourth grades would predict whether a boy or a girl would succeed on cohort-defined masculine, feminine, or sex-neutral tasks. Older children predicted the winners along sex-typed dimensions. Boys and girls predicted a male more frequently when the task was…

How people organize sensory data is influenced not only by their role as actor observer; the extent of their empathy for other actors; and the vividness, availability, representativeness, and negative impact of the data; but also by the culture from which it springs. To determine how the attributions people make are affected by culture, which can…

Differences in children's interpersonal perceptions and in their conceptions of behavior disorders in hypothetical peers were investigated in a sample of 34 boys between the ages of 10 and 13. Two groups of subjects were formed: 17 subjects attended special classes for the emotionally handicapped and were classified as exhibiting conduct problems…