This study examines the development of children's concepts of illness in light of Piagetian findings regarding the ontogenesis of causal relations. The Concept of Illness protocol was administered to 72 3-, 7-, and 11-year-old children; 24 from each age group. Children were interviewed individually in a school setting. Raters assigned subjects'…

New measures of sex role style assess the respondent's self-attribution of sex-typed interpersonal characteristics. In light of claims that androgynous roles are related to behavioral flexibility, the current study investigated the relationship between sex role orientations and performance in interpersonal situations. Males and females in each of…

Objective self-awareness theory and stimulus incongruity theory suggest that focusing one's attention on one's behavior in an unfamiliar situation will increase the drive to evaluate oneself, which may be manifested in social comparison. Videotapes of male undergraduates conversing with hand-held puppets were used to study direction of attention…

Two types of self-blame were investigated: characterological self-blame, corresponding to the popular negative view of self-blame; and behavioral self-blame, representing a positive attempt to reestablish a belief in control. Results of a questionnaire completed by rape crisis centers located across the country attest to the pervasiveness of…

A total of 20 boys and girls from grades 1, 4, 7, and 11 were interviewed on the topic of deviant behavior among their peers. They were also asked to make deviance judgments on two story characters whose behaviors exemplified qualities that typically evoke an attribution of psychological disorder on the part of adult judges. One story described…

The concept "trochiac meter" was taught to 180 college Ss by means of eight treatment conditions. The independent variables involved presenting a definition (D) or instances (E) or both combined with attribute definition (A) and/or atrribute prompting (P). Dependent variables were corrected classification and specified classification…

A total of 112 female teachers and student teachers acted as participants or observers in an experimental situation in which the participant taught a simulated elementary school child a mathematics lesson for three 5-minute trials while the observer watched. The child's performance supposedly either improved over trials (Low-High), deteriorated…

This study (N=160 males) examined the cognitive and behavioral effects of overt success feedback on subjects high and low in resultant achievement motivation (RAM). The cognitive effects of overt success feedback were investigated by requesting attributions to effort, ability, luck, and task difficulty concerning performance on a digit-symbol…

Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale (I-E) and the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes were administered to 138 undergraduate students in a personalized system of instruction course. Results indicated that the I-E scale is related only to academic attitudes and that study habits are related to two measures of performance. (Author/JAC)

Graduate students completed questionnaires containing either past performance information alone or past performance information and aptitude scores for a hypothetical student. Low aptitude scores led to greater ability attributions, regardless of performance. High aptitude scores led to greater effort attributions given poor performance and to…

Teachers rated responsibility and expected performance of first and second grade students. Actual classroom interaction was observed; high or low expectation was related to teacher praise or criticism. Other relationships between teacher expectation, perceived personal responsibility, teacher rating of responsibility, and teacher feedback behavior…

Three vignettes describing characters who exhibited disordered (antisocial, withdrawn, or self-punitive) behavior were read to second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children. The children were asked what caused the behaviors, whether characters wanted to behave as they did, and whether and how characters could change their behavior. (Author/JMB)

A total of 556 Israeli fifth graders participated in a study of delay of gratification. Two hypothetical delay of gratification situations were presented. The first situation required a choice between an immediate and a more valuable but delayed reward. The second situation required the subjects to predict an intelligent child's choice in the same…

Investigated the role of metatheoretical assumptions regarding clinicians' attributions of patient responsibility for problem cause and therapeutic change in contributing to similarities and dissimilarities in theoretical orientation and investigated the implications of these assumptions for clinical practice. Observed relations with estimated…

Sixty-four 10- to 12-year-olds (N=64), identified as gifted, average, or educable mentally retarded (EMR), were administered tasks in which failure/success were manipulated. Assessment indicated that gifted students credited success to low task difficulty, had initially high expectations which lowered following failure, and persisted more with…