Extended Attributional Feedback: Sequence Effects During Remedial Reading Instruction

This experiment investigated how the sequence of ability and effort attributional feedback over an extended period influences children's reading comprehension, attributions, and self-efficacy. Children with comprehension deficiencies participated in a training program that included instruction and practice in identifying important ideas. One group of children (ability-ability) periodically received ability feedback, a second group (effort-effort) received effort feedback, a third condition (ability-effort) was given ability feedback during the first half of the training program and effort feedback during the second half, and for a fourth group this sequence was reversed (effort-ability). Children who received ability feedback during the second half of training (ability-ability and effort-ability conditions) developed higher ability attributions and self-efficacy than subjects in the other two conditions. The sequence of extended attributional feedback did not differentially affect skill development. Implications for teaching are discussed. Article: According to Bandura (1977, 1981, 1982), psychological procedures change behavior in part by creating and strengthening perceived self-efficacy, which refers to personal judgments of one's performance capabilities in a given activity. Self-efficacy can influence choice of activities, effort expended , persistence, and task accomplishments. People acquire information about their self-efficacy from their actual performances, by observing others, through persuasion, and from physiological indexes (e.g., heart rate). Attributions, or perceived causes of outcomes, are hypothesized to exert important effects on self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977; Schunk, 1984). Attributional theories contend that in achievement contexts students often believe that their successes and failures are due to ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck (Frieze, 1980; Weiner, 1979, 1983). Performance expectancies (i.e., self-efficacy) heavily depend on attributions for prior outcomes (McMahan, 1973; Weiner, 1979, 1983). Young children view effort as the prime cause of outcomes and abilityrelated terms as closely associated (Frieze, 1980), but around age 9 a distinct conception of ability begins to emerge (Nicholls, 1978). Ability attributions become increasingly important influences on performance expectancies with development, whereas effort attributions decline in importance (Harari & Covington, 1981; Nicholls, 1978, 1979). Once children begin to differentiate the concepts of ability and effort, the perception of less effort required to perform a task should raise self-efficacy more than when greater effort is required, because the latter implies that skills may be lacking (Bandura, 1981; Schunk, 1984). The effects of ability and effort information also have been investigated in attributional feedback studies (Andrews & Debus, 1978; Dweck, 1975; Miller, Brickman & Bolen, 1975; Schunk, in press). Linking past failures with insufficient effort promotes children's persistence and effort attributions (Andrews & Debus, 1978; Dweck, 1975), and effort feedback for prior successes enhances motivation, self-efficacy, and skills (Schunk, 1983). Positive effects on children's achievement also have been obtained from providing ability attributional feedback for prior successes (Miller et al., 1975). Ability feedback promotes self-efficacy and achievement more than effort feedback once children begin to form a distinct conception of ability (Schunk, 1983). Recent research shows that the sequence of attributional feedback can influence children's self-efficacy and achievement (Schunk, in press). In this study, children lacking subtraction skills participated in a training program that included instruction and problem solving. One group of students periodically received ability feedback, a second group received effort feedback, a third condition was given ability feedback during the first half of training and effort feedback during the second half, and for a fourth group this sequence was reversed. Students who initially received ability feedback (ability-ability and ability-effort conditions) developed higher ability attributions, self-efficacy, and skills, than those initially given effort feedback. Schunk (in press) explained these effects as follows. Early successes constitute a prominent cue for forming ability attributions (Frieze & Weiner, 1971; Weiner, 1974). As children successfully solved problems during training they likely believed that they were becoming more competent, and telling them that the ability was responsible for their early successes supported this belief (Schunk, 1983; in press). Children may have viewed subsequent effort feedback (i.e., the ability-effort condition) more as a reflection of how diligently they had been applying their skills than as an indicator of their level of competence (Schunk, in press). Although early effort feedback also should have led to higher self-efficacy, students might have wondered how competent they really were if they had to work hard to succeed and whether they could sustain the high effort required for success. Children might have questioned the credibility of subsequent ability feedback (effort-ability condition) after repeatedly being told that their successes were due to effort (Schunk, in press). These benefits of ability feedback for early successes must be qualified due to the short-term nature of the Schunk (in press) research. Children received attributional feedback over four training sessions, five times per session or 20 times total. Over a longer time period, attributional feedback given for later successes might influence self-efficacy and achievement. Providing extended ability feedback should eventually lead to higher ability attributions and self-efficacy among effort-ability children, because continuing successes over time ought to enhance the credibility of the ability feedback. In contrast, extended effort feedback could lead abilityeffort children to begin to doubt their capabilities, because they might wonder why they now must work hard to succeed. Such self-doubts would not enhance ability attributions or self-efficacy. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how the sequence of extended attributional feedback affects children's attributions, self-efficacy and ,achievement. Children low in reading skills participated in a comprehension training program over 15 sessions, during which they periodically received attributional feedback. Students were assigned to one of four treatments distinguished by the feedback sequence (Schunk, in press): ability-ability, ability-effort, effort-ability, effort-effort. Based on the preceding considerations, it was predicted that providing children with ability feedback during the second half of the training program (i.e., the ability-ability and effort-ability conditions) would lead to higher ability attributions, self-efficacy and skills, compared with providing effort feedback for later successes (abilityeffort and effort-effort conditions). It also was predicted that students in the latter two conditions would make higher effort attributions, because extended effort feedback during the second half of training was expected to increase the salience of effort as a cause of success.