The performance of institutionalized delinquent youngsters on paired associate learning tasks was investigated to determine whether level of aspiration (LOA) statements were associated with improved performance under varying feedback conditions. The effects of the feedback conditions were also examined. Forty-eight male adolescents were randomly assigned to the following six treatment conditions: (1) Delayed Feedback, (2) Delayed Feedback with LOA, (3) Immediate Feedback, (4) Immediate Feedback with LOA, (5) No Feedback, (6) No Feedback with LOA. The LOA conditions produced significantly better performance than did the no-LOA conditions. Implications for curricular intervention are discussed.
DISABLE LEARNERS often exhibit a deficiency in attending behaviors, with the result that teachers of such children sometimes complain of a &dquo;lack of motivation&dquo; among their students. A commonly used approach to motivate behavior change is the use of Skinnerian-like behavior modification schedules; however, this requires specialized knowledge and intricate planning from the teacher. In addition, some teachers find themselves philosophically opposed to operant conditioning.A very simple and inexpensive method of motivating students for some types of learning tasks seems to be available. Several empirical studies indicate that, if the child's positive attention is focused on his performance at a task, the task itself may be used to motivate him. It has been shown that many youngsters, including underachievers, may learn more efficiently when they are required to set a goal for a specific lesson.' For example, youngsters can be expected to learn spelling lists more quickly if they are asked, &dquo;How many spelling words do you think you will get right when I test you?&dquo;The primary advantages of the goal-setting approach are that goal setting may be used for a large variety of school tasks, and that little planning is required from the teacher-except to specify to the student the number of items in the learning task.The most effective way to use goal setting seems to be with repeated trials. Thus, if a student is to be tested over the same at Stockholm University Library on August 18, 2015 isc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
The effects of full and partial verbalization of information contained in pictures and of full verbalization without pictures on retarded youngsters' memory for information were examined. The subjects were 30 educable retardates and 30 normal controls. The results indicated that facilitation of recall for 13- to 15-yr.-old mentally retarded youngsters will occur with the use of pictures only if the aspects of the picture which are to be remembered are verbalized. The relevance of the findings for high-interest low-vocabulary textbooks for the retarded were discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.