Kennedy T. Hill

Sociocultural and Educational Correlates of Success-Failure Attributions and Evaluation Anxiety in the School Setting for Black, Hispanic, and Anglo Children

The role of social, cultural, and personal factors in moderating achievement attributions and evaluation anxiety as they affect math performance in school was studied for 397 Anglo, black, and Hispanic students in grades four to eight. Cross-group analyses indicated that motivation contributed to low academic achievement in all groups, but different factors were important for different groups; causal attributions were more predictive of math scores for the black and Anglo children, while anxiety scores were more predictive for the Hispanic children. Across ethnic groups, those children who do experience a debilitating constellation of motivational variables are from families who are upwardly mobile and on the borderline of socioeconomic or cultural strata. The findings suggest the importance of developing instructional activities to facilitate positive motivation that are in accord with the motivational needs of the particular child as well as further research to pinpoint the motivational needs of different groups of children.

Motivation, Evaluation, and Educational Testing Policy

Mark is a 4th grade student in the Jefferson Elementary School in a middle-size American community. His school is integrated and due to changing neighborhood residential patterns has a good mix of children from various socioeconomic backgrounds. The Jefferson Elementary School student population in many ways mirrors the larger community.

Effects of an adult's presence and praise on young children's performance☆

Abstract The separate effects of praise from an adult and the presence of that adult on preschool childrens performance rate change at a simple motor task were studied for 32 4-year-old children of each sex. Following a base-line minute during which the experimenter was present but nonresponsive to the subject, the child was assigned to one of four experimental groups for the next 5 min in which the experimenter: (a) either made supportive comments or remained nonresponsive, and (b) either remained present or was absent behind a screen. The session was completed by a 5-min extinction phase in which the base-line conditions were reinstituted. The major finding was that performance increased under both adult praise and adult presence, with the effects being additive: performance increase was highest when the adult was present and praising the child, and lowest (actually decreasing) when the adult was absent and nonresponsive to the child. The reintroduction of the experimenter during extinction also facilitated performance. The results were related to previous research on both social reinforcement and imitation, and several developmental changes were hypothesized for the effects of both adult reactions and an adults presence.

Social reinforcement as a function of Task Instructions, sex of S, age of S, and baseline performance ☆

Abstract Forty boys and forty girls at each of two age levels (Grades 1 and 2 vs Grades 4 and 5) performed at a marble-dropping task, which was introduced as either a game or a test. Four females served as Es. The Es were nonresponsive to S during a baseline minute, and during the subsequent 5 minutes of the task either made supportive comments (Social Reinforcement Condition) or continued to play a neutral role (Nonreinforcement Condition). Within each age level, Ss were blocked according to the samples median base rate level of response. and base rate was crossed with the other variables in the analysis of difference scores. This procedure minimized group differences in baseline performance, a desirable control in the analysis of difference scores. For older boys, social reinforcement resulted in higher difference scores under game than test instructions, whereas nonreinforcement produced higher difference scores for test than game instructions. For older girls, an opposite pattern of results was obtained, resulting in the significant triple interaction between Sex of S, Reinforcement Condition, and Task Instructions for older Ss. For younger Ss, social reinforcement produced higher difference scores in general than did nonreinforcement. At both age levels, base rate level of S did not interact with any of the major findings. Base rate level of response was, however, a highly significant general determinant of change in rate of response, with both older and younger Ss of high base rate level showing steady decreases in performance across the subsequent 5 minutes of the task. The results were related to previous findings and the advantages of blocking on baseline in analyses of change were discussed in general and in light of the present findings.

The interaction of metadiscourse and anxiety in determining children's learning of social studies textbook materials

The role of attitudinal, voice, and informational metadiscourse characteristics and level of student anxiety were studied as they affect learning from social studies textbooks for 120 sixth-graders. Analyses of covariance, controlling for reading ability, revealed significant interaction effects involving metadiscourse and anxiety. As expected, high anxious students showed their best performance with first person voice and no attitudinal metadiscourse while low anxious students showed the opposite effect. The importance of studying the joint effects of metadiscourse and anxiety as determinants of textbook reading is discussed.