The widespread and increasing use of cooperative learning is one of the great success stories of social and educational psychology. Its success largely rests on the relationships among theory, research, and practice. Social interdependence theory provides a foundation on which cooperative learning is built. More than 1,200 research studies have been conducted in the past 11 decades on cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts. Findings from these studies have validated, modified, refined, and extended the theory. From the theory, procedures for the teacher’s role in using formal and informal cooperative learning and cooperative base groups have been operationalized. Those procedures are widely used by educators throughout the world. The applications have resulted in revisions of the theory and the generation of new research.

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An Educational Psychology Success Story: Social Interdependence Theory and Cooperative Learning

Social interdependence theory is a classic example of the interaction of theory, research, and practice. The premise of the theory is the way that goals are structured determines how individuals interact, which in turn creates outcomes. Since its formulation nearly 60 years ago, social interdependence theory has been modified, extended, and refined on the basis of the increasing knowledge about, and application of, the theory. Researchers have conducted over 750 research studies on the relative merits of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts and the conditions under which each is appropriate. Social interdependence theory has been widely applied, especially in education and business. These applications have resulted in revisions of the theory and the generation of considerable new research. The authors critically analyze the new developments resulting from extensive research on, and wide-scale applications of, social interdependence theory.

New developments in social interdependence theory.

A meta-analysis was conducted on the relative impact of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts on motor skills performance. Competition was divided into 3 groups: zero sum, appropriate, and unclear. The motor skills tasks were divided into means-interdependent and means-independent tasks. The dependent variables were achievement-performance, interpersonal attraction, social support, and self-esteem. A total of 64 studies met the criteria for inclusion. Effects sizes were computed, and confidence intervals were used to determine their significance. A fail-safe sample size was computed to determine how many additional studies were needed to change the significance of the results. Cooperation resulted in higher achievement for means-interdependent tasks in zero-sum competition, unclear competition, and individualistic efforts, and it promoted higher achievement for means-independent tasks for unclear competition and individualistic efforts. For all comparisons, cooperation resulted in greater interpersonal attraction, social support, and self-esteem.

Does competition enhance or inhibit motor performance: a meta-analysis.

This study investigated whether working memory capacity could account for individual differences in verbal fluency. Working memory was assessed by the speaking span test (Daneman & Green, 1986) that taxes the processing and storage functions of working memory during sentence production. Verbal fluency was assessed by (1) a speech generation task in which subjects made a speech about a picture; (2) an oral reading task in which subjects read aloud a prose passage; and (3) a Baars, Motley, and MacKay (1975) task for eliciting oral slips of the tongue (e.g.,wet gun forget one). Speking span was significantly correlated with performance on all three tasks; individuals with small speaking spans were less fluent and more prone to making speech errors. Whereas speaking span was related to individual differences in verbal fluency on the speech and reading tasks, reading span, a measure included to assess working memory capacity during sentence comprehension, was only significantly related to individual differences in verbal fluency on the reading task. The methodology proved useful for revealing whether a particular kind of oral reading error reflected a reading failure or an articulatory failure.

Working memory as a predictor of verbal fluency.

Social Interdependence Theory and Cooperative Learning: The Teacher's Role

Gray and Gummerman (1975) contended that eidetic imagery differs from visual-memory imagery only in quantitative aspects. There is evidence to controvert that argument and to support a theory of eidetic imagery as a qualitatively distinct phenomenon. It is proposed that eidetic imagery plays an essential role in early development and that superimposition methods are adequate for measurement of eidetic imagery in young children. It is further suggested that eidetic imagery is the precursor of iconic storage. The persistence of eidetic imagery in older children appears to be associated with some but not all forms of brain damage and may be overshadowed by more advanced memory imagery.

The Enigmatic Eidetic Image: A Reply to Gray and Gummerman:

Summary Seventy-eight boys and 71 girls (ages eight to 18 years) were assigned to one of eight groups on the basis of scores on the Junior Esysenck Personality Inventory, the Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, and sex of the S. The Ss were administered a simple and a complex verbal fluency task and the coding subtest of the WISC. It was found that extraverted children of both sexes did better than introverted children on both measures of verbal fluency and the nonverbal coding task. Anxiety influenced girl's performance on the more complex verbal fluency task, but did not alter boys' performance. The present findings were discussed in relation to the adult literature relating extraversion, anxiety, and verbal fluency.

Effects of extraversion, anxiety, and sex on children's verbal fluency and coding task performance.

Twenty HA and 20 LA Ss were selected from 101 males who had taken the MAS. The Ss were further divided into competitive and noncompetitive subgroups and administered a simple motor steadiness test. It was found that LA Ss made fewer errors than HA Ss in the steadiness test and that com­ petition exacerbated performance differences between HA and LA Ss. Over the years, a number of scales have been developed for the purpose of measuring "manifest" anxiety. Of these scales, Taylor's (1953) MAS seems to have generated the most controversy. Much of the ensuing controversy has to do with whether or not the MAS measures a constant "level of internal anxiety or emotionality," or whether it measures susceptibility to "anxiety" provoking stimuli. In either case, it should follow that people with high MA scores would differ from low scorers in a variety of performance measures. The literature, however, does not support this contention; rather, such relationships have been less than conclusive.

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The effects of anxiety on motor-steadiness in competitive and noncompetitive conditions

"Feeling" with a stick.

The popularity of the Rod-and-frame Test (RFT) as a research instrument has greatly increased over the years. Part of this popularity may be attributed to the recent development of portable versions of the stationary model that eliminate the need for elaborate laboratory facilities. Before the portable RFTs are used in place of the traditional RFTs (stationary), however, it is crucial to know whether they yield comparable scores. The present study correlated scores of a c or table RFT manufactured by Research Media, Inc. (Model PR-20), with scores of a stationary RFT manufact~~red by the Marietta Apparatus Company (Model 18-10). Both models require light-proof conditions. Twenty-seven males and 25 females were randomly drawn from a pool of Ss enrolled in introductory psychology. Each S received 8 trials with both models, the frame being set 28' to the right or left and the starting position of the rod being randomized for each trial. The order of presentation for the two models was counterbalanced. Ss' score on each apparatus was the mean absolute error in degrees from true vertical. Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations for both

Glen M. Vaught

Papers

The Enigmatic Eidetic Image: A Reply to Gray and Gummerman:

Effects of extraversion, anxiety, and sex on children's verbal fluency and coding task performance.

The effects of anxiety on motor-steadiness in competitive and noncompetitive conditions

"Feeling" with a stick.

Correlations between Scores for a Portable RFT and a Stationary RFT