The effects of reward or reinforcement on preceding behavior depend in part on whether the person perceives the reward as contingent on his own behavior or independent of it. Acquisition and performance differ in situations perceived as determined by skill versus chance. Persons may also differ in generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. This report summarizes several experiments which define group differences in behavior when Ss perceive reinforcement as contingent on their behavior versus chance or experimenter control. The report also describes the development of tests of individual differences in a generalized belief in internal-external control and provides reliability, discriminant validity and normative data for 1 test, along with a description of the results of several studies of construct validity.

Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.

The psychology of interpersonal relations , The psychology of interpersonal relations , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

The psychology of interpersonal relations

New developments in the science of learning science of learning overview mind and brain how experts differ from novices how children learn learning and transfer the learning environment curriculum, instruction and commnity effective teaching - examples in history, mathematics and science teacher learning technology to support learning conclusions from new developments in the science of learning.

How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school.

▪ Abstract The prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role in cognitive control, in the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals. Its neural basis, however, has remained a mystery. Here, we propose that cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them. They provide bias signals to other brain structures whose net effect is to guide the flow of activity along neural pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal states, and outputs needed to perform a given task. We review neurophysiological, neurobiological, neuroimaging, and computational studies that support this theory and discuss its implications as well as further issues to be addressed

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An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function

Past work has documented and described major patterns of adaptive and maladaptive behavior: the mastery-oriented and the helpless patterns. In this article, we present a research-based model that accounts for these patterns in terms of underlying psychological processes. The model specifies how individuals' implicit theories orient them toward particular goals and how these goals set up the different patterns. Indeed, we show how each feature (cognitive, affective, and behavioral) of the adaptive and maladaptive patterns can be seen to follow directly from different goals. We then examine the generality of the model and use it to illuminate phenomena in a wide variety of domains. Finally, we place the model in its broadest context and examine its implications for our understanding of motivational and personality processes. The task for investigators of motivation and personality is to identify major patterns of behavior and link them to underlying psychological processes. In this article we (a) describe a research-based model that accounts for major patterns of behavior, (b) examine the generality of this model—its utility for understanding domains beyond the ones in which it was originally developed, and (c) explore the broader implications of the model for motivational and personality processes.

/pdf/a-social-cognitive-approach-to-motivation-and-personality-4r18vjg2jg.pdf

A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality

The Child's Conception of Space

Our encounters with the physical world are filled with miraculous puzzles - wind appears from somewhere, heavy objects (like oil tankers) float on oceans, yet smaller objects go to the bottom of our water-filled buckets. As adults, instead of confronting a whole world, we are reduced to driving from one parking garage to another. "The Child's Conception of Physical Causality", part of the very beginning of the ground-breaking work of the Swiss naturalist Jean Piaget, is filled with creative experimental ideas for probing the most sophisticated ways of thinking in children. The strength of Piaget's research is evident in this collection of empirical data, systematically organized by tasks that illuminate how things work. Piaget's data are remarkably rich. In his new introduction, Jean Valsiner observes that Piaget had no grand theoretical aims, yet the book's simple power cannot be ignored. Piaget's great contribution to developmental psychology was his "clinical method" - a tactic that integrated relevant aspects of naturalistic experiment, interview and observation. Through this systematic inquiry, we gain insight into children's thinking. Reading Piaget will encourage the contemporary reader to think about the unity of psychological phenomena and their theoretical underpinnings. His wealth of creative experimental ideas probes into the most sophisticated ways of thinking in children. Technologies change, yet the creative curiosity of children remains basically unhindered by the consumer society. Piaget's data preserve the reality of the original phenomena. As such, this work will provide a source of information for developmental psychologists and those involved in the field of experimental science.

Jean Piaget

Papers

The Child's Conception of Space

The Child's Conception of Physical Causality

The Growth of Logical Thinking

The equilibration of cognitive structures : the central problem of intellectual development

The Development of Thought: Equilibration of Cognitive Structures