The present study aims to evaluate the individual differences of attributions of actual events in educational settings and to investigate the effect of causal attributions in a natural school setting. Study I examined the structure of causal attributions for academic achievement in high school physics. Although usual factors such as effort, ability, mood, luck, and other persons, were extracted, the following points were noteworthy. Effort attribution of memory task was found to be different from effort attribution in general. 'Ability' and task difficulty' were found to constitute the same factor. Study II examined the relationships among the following variables: causal attributions made for the first mathematics test, dissatisfaction with the test performance, expectancy for the next test performance, learning behavior after the test, and the achievement of the second test. One hundred and fourteen high school students served as subjects. It was found that those students who attributed their poor performance to lack of effort felt dissatisfaction and studied mathematics more, and consequently showed a better performance on the second test. That is, the present study clearly showed that causal attributions as cognitive variables had some indirect effects on learning behavior and future performance.
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