High and low-achieving students' dispositional expectancy for success on an academic task, and causal attributions mediating differential sensitivity to success and failure and generalization to another academic domain
Description
Fifth and Sixth grade males were identified as High Achievers (n = 37) or Low Achievers (n = 34) based upon school test scores and grades. Students from both achievement levels were given either five solvable (success treatment) or five unsolvable (failure treatment) number or word problems. Initial expectancy was measured by students' estimate of the number of treatment problems they would correctly answer and by the persistence time of students who received unsolvable problems. Causal attributions were assessed by: (1) asking students to rate the similarity of the contrived success or failure to their typical performance in the same and the other academic subject area (domain), and to the perceived performance of classmates and (2) by asking students to attribute their performance to ability, effort, task difficulty, or luck. Expectancy measures were obtained for additional tasks in the same and other domains and solvable (test) number and word task were administered. No differences due to achievement level were found for initial expectancy or persistence measures. For both High and Low Achievers, expectancy for same domain tasks increased following success and decreased after failure. Generalization of treatment based expectancy to other domain tasks was found only for High Achievers. High Achievers rated success as more stable than failure and Low Achievers rated success as due more to external factors than failure. High Achievers also rated overall outcomes as more global than did Low Achievers, and students of both achievement levels rated success as more global than failure. Attributional choices did not correlate significantly with attributional ratings, and were not found to vary as a function of achievement level or treatment condition. Although the hypothesized difference in dispositional expectancy as a function of achievement level was not found, a predicted differential sensitivity to success and failure was shown. High Achievers perceived failure as arising from temporary, limited factors and success as due to lasting, comprehensive factors. Low Achievers viewed their overall performance as relatively situation-specific, with success resulting more from external factors and failure from relatively internal factors. Implications of these findings for educational remediation efforts with low achieving students were discussed