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Expectations and recall of texts: The more able–more difficult effect
Learning and Individual Differences 19 (2009) 609–614
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Learning and Individual Differences j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / l i n d i f
Expectations and recall of texts: The more able–more difficult effect Angelica Moè ⁎ Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 January 2009 Received in revised form 11 July 2009 Accepted 14 August 2009 Keywords: Expectations Recall Learning
a b s t r a c t Expectations about self-competence and difficulty of a task to be undertaken can foster motivation and hence affect engagement, giving rise to individual differences in performance. This effect was examined in a memory task. An increase in recall performance following instructions about high competence was hypothesised; in addition, a modulating effect of instructions about easiness or difficulty of the material was expected. Two experiments were performed, in which expectations were established by giving instructions of high or low competence and easiness or difficulty of two texts: objectively, one easy, one difficult. The results showed that being given instructions about high competence raises performance if presented alone and if difficult texts are expected when the actual text is easy: the more able–more difficult effect. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Ability to recall information is vital for everyday cognition, academic achievement, and performing a wide range of tasks and activities. It becomes even more important when information is presented orally, thus precluding review, in contrast with use of written texts, which can be re-read and checked for overlooked points, allowing better assimilation. Individual differences in recall depend on a wide range of factors such as abilities, strategies used, metacognitive skills, personal elaboration, organization of material and study habits (e.g., Herrmann, Raybeck, & Gutman, 1993; Pressley, Yokoi, Van Etten, & Freebern, 1997). All these cognitive and metacognitive activities are sustained by motivation. There are many motivational theories (for a review see Murphy & Alexander, 2000). Of these, I explore the role of expectations, major motivational drives because they sustain engagement, if positive, or favour disengagement and effort withdrawal, if negative. The focus is on ‘expected competence’ and ‘expected difficulty of task’. Expected competence affects motivation and performance: the more competent people consider themselves in tackling a task, the better they perform (Bandura, 1997; Pajares, 1996). When people perceive themselves as being capable, and assess a task as having medium difficulty, they create positive expectations for themselves and perform well on the task (Eccles et al., 1983; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Instead, lack of competence decreases motivation and performance, as the result of unwillingness to reveal the limits of personal ability (Skaalvik, 1997).
⁎ Department of General Psychology, Via Venezia, 8, 35131 Padua, Italy. Tel.: +39 49 8276689; fax: +39 49 8276600. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1041-6080/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2009.08.002
Expected difficulty in a task creates a challenge (Harter, 1978) and interacts with expected competence. According to Atkinson's (1964) need for achievement theory (nAch), people are motivated to tackle tasks of medium–high difficulty when they perceive themselves as competent and they believe to succeed. In addition, expected difficulty can reassure and free from fear of failure: unsuccessful performance can be attributed to the task difficulty not lack of ability (Weiner, 1985). All these effects of expected competence and expected difficulty on performance have never been studied with recall of orally presented texts, despite this representing a very common learning situation for students listening to lessons and lectures, and also for people in everyday situations. When approaching a task, a person can have many expectations about personal abilities or attitudes and task characteristics, and these can interact. Experimentally, they can be independently manipulated to ensure better isolation, allowing study of the individual effects. Two experiments were therefore planned. Experiment 1 considered the effects of instructions separately, following a between-subjects design. Participants were told they had high/low competence in recalling, or that the texts would be easier or more difficult than the previous one. Experiment 2 was run following a within-subjects design. Participants were given both kinds of instruction about competence in recalling and about text difficulty, thus allowing comparison of the four combinations of different kinds of expectation. Of course, the objective difficulty of the material is of great importance. In natural conditions one can expect a difficult task to be easy or vice versa. The consequences on motivation and performance should be different, because expectations affect effort expenditure and modulate affect in performing the task, and both effort and positive affect lead to good performance (e.g. Marshall & Brown, 2006). For this reason, two texts were used, one objectively more difficult than the other, with the material difficulty unknown to participants.
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The aim was to demonstrate, in a free recall task, that instructions inducing high competence and difficulty expectations raise performance. The novelty of the research was to carry this out on a free recall task, considering both separate and joint effects of expected competence and difficulty, and manipulating the objective difficulty of the material. Predictions were that: 1) high competence expectations encourage better performance more than low competence expectations, since they enhance self-efficacy, self-confidence and effort spent; 2) instructions about easiness or difficulty of a task are less effective than those about competence. As suggested by the theories of both Harter (1978) and Atkinson (1964), expected difficulty is not a challenge per se, but becomes such for people who expect to be competent. On the contrary, expecting to be competent can be sufficiently motivating to cause an increase in performance even when the difficulty of the material is unknown (Bandura, 1997); 3) expectation of difficulty raises performance when participants receive high rather than low competence instructions, because people expecting to be competent are more likely to consider a difficulty expectation as motivating than those who expect low competence. 2. Experiment 1 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Forty-eight first-year psychology students, 40 females and 8 males (mean age 19.40 yrs, SD = 1.58) participated on a voluntary basis. They were divided into four groups of 12 participants, each given different instructions: high competence (11 females, 1 male); low competence (10 females, 2 males); easy texts (8 females, 4 males); difficult texts (11 females, 1 male). See Procedure, Section 2.1.4, for details. 2.1.2. Materials The materials consisted of a 112-word text entitled ‘The Lake’ for the baseline, and four texts from 122 to 167 words in length for the experimental session. These latter were entitled ‘The Sports Centre’ and ‘The Zoo’ and had been devised for a previous study with different aims (De Beni & Moè, 2003) in two versions: easy, i.e. recalled higher; and difficult, i.e. recalled lower. The means obtained by De Beni and Moè (2003) were 20.78 (SD = 3.66) and 16.74 (SD = 3.56) for the easy and difficult texts, respectively. All texts comprised 14 idea-units selected by two independent judges as expressing a single concept. Discrepancies were resolved by a third judge. See Appendix A for the baseline text (‘The Lake’) and the two versions of the ‘The Sports Centre’. 2.1.3. Design A mixed design was applied with groups (corresponding to the four expectations) between-subjects and text (easy vs. difficult) within-subjects. 2.1.4. Procedure The week before the experiment, a collective session was held to assess a number of baseline measures. First, pre-experimental selfratings of expected difficulty and competence in recall were assessed to verify that the four groups corresponding to instructions do not differ in these metacognitive evaluations. Participants were introduced to the task they were to be given, i.e. recall a short text. The instructions were “you will be presented with a 1-minute text played from a tape recorder. You have to listen to it very carefully. At the end, you will be asked to write down a free recall on paper. Next week you
will be told your score individually, and will be set a similar recall task”. They were then asked to write down their ratings for the following two questions on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much): a) How easy do you think the recall task will be?, and b) How much do you think you will recall? Second, they listened to a tape-recording (1 min and 15 s) of the ‘The Lake’ text to memorise its contents. At the end of the presentation and after a short-interpolated task to avoid recency effects (counting downward from a 3-digit number for 30 s), participants were given 5 min to write a free recall of the text. The recall sheets were collected, and the participants thanked and asked to participate in the second session the following week, during which they would be told their personal score. Recall sheets were scored by two independent judges. Discrepancies in the scores assigned were resolved by a third judge. Two points were assigned for each idea-unit well recalled (almost verbatim), and one for each partially recalled. These partial scores were summed to give a total score. Maximum theoretical score was 28 (from 14 ideaunits). A frequencies analysis was performed to identify a group of low-scoring participants (n = 8, recall range 9–13, less than half the text recalled) and a group of high-scoring participants (n = 9, recall range 21–26), to avoid assigning the former to the high competence instructions group and the latter to the low competence instructions group, and so avoid cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). A second reason was to create a more ecological situation. In fact, participants scoring very low or very high in baseline may have perceived their general level of performance and found it hard to believe they had really scored higher or lower than expected. Moreover, in natural situations, they would have received feedback deriving from extremely low or high performance. For groups instructed on easiness or difficulty of the texts to be presented, the experimenter randomly assigned them to conditions on arrival at the laboratory, without looking at the baseline performance. Of the 8 baseline low-scoring participants, 4 were in fact assigned to the low competence instructions group and 4 to the difficulty text instructions group. The 9 baseline high-scoring participants were assigned to the following instructions groups: 3 to the high competence, 4 to the easy texts, and 2 to the difficulty texts. In the analysis, effects due to the baseline level of performance has been resolved in two ways: a) using the baseline mean recall as a covariate, and b) running a second analysis without considering the 17 participants scoring very high/low in the baseline. For the experimental session in the following week, participants were invited individually to the laboratory, where they were given instructions according to their group: “Your score in the memory test is one of the highest/lowest of the whole group. You appear to have a good/poor memory for texts. This result, however, was obtained with only one text sample, and its result cannot be considered definitive. To assess your memory for texts more accurately, I will now present you with a further two texts similar to last week's” (high/low competence instructions group) or “I will now present you with two texts similar to last week's but easier/more difficult, in order to assess your memory for texts more accurately” (easy/difficulty text instructions group). Following this, the participants were told that after the presentation of each text (1 min 30 s) they would have to write down what they remembered (5 min) after a 30-second interpolated task (as in the baseline). The texts were then presented one at a time from taperecordings, in one of the following sequences: Sports Centre easy–Zoo difficult; Sports Centre difficult–Zoo easy; Zoo easy–Sports Centre difficult; Zoo difficult–Sports Centre easy. Finally, participants were debriefed, thanked and informed about their real performance, the aim of the research and some of the theoretical considerations. 2.2. Results As a preliminary step, two Kruskal–Wallis comparisons were run to compare the four groups' metacognitive evaluations. They were both n.s.,
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p >.05, confirming that the four groups do not differ in pre-experiment personal evaluations regarding both difficulty (M= 4.19, SD= 1.02) and competence (M=3.71, SD =1.25) in recall of texts. The two ratings were highly inter-correlated (r =.59, p <.001), but none correlated with baseline performance. In other words, there was no relationship between performance and metacognitive evaluations, i.e. general beliefs about the task of recalling a passage assessed before presentation of the target task. This finding excluded the possibility that the specific task instructions given after baseline assessment and before presentation of the target task interacted with pre-existing beliefs. Experimental texts were scored as for the baseline, assigning one or two points for each recalled idea-unit and then summing these partial scores. Judges were blind to conditions. Maximum theoretical score was 28 (from 14 idea-units). A mixed design MANCOVA, with one between-groups variable (instructions: high competence, low competence, easiness, difficulty) and one within-groups variable (text: easy, difficult) was performed on the mean recall scores. As the groups differed in baseline recall performance, the mean recall scores of the baseline performance were added as covariate. Baseline mean recall was 19.08 (1.73), 14.17 (2.12), 15.50 (3.50) and 20.25 (2.49) for instructions groups high competence, low competence, difficult texts, easy texts, respectively. The following effects emerged: instructions, F (3, 43) = 6.86, p = .001, η2 = .32; text, F (1, 43) = 5.70, p = .021, η2 = .12, easy M = 18.75, SD = 3.62, difficult M = 13.17, SD= 4.49; baseline recall, F (1, 43) = 4.67, p = .036, η2 = .10. There was no significant interaction. Mean recall and standard deviations (in brackets) of the four groups were 19.13 (2.63), 12.75 (2.87), 15.79 (2.17) and 16.17 (2.72) for instructions of high competence, low competence, difficulty and easiness, respectively, see Fig. 1. Tukey post-hoc showed that the low competence instructions group recalled less than the easiness and difficulty instructions groups, which did not differ from one another; the high competence instructions group recalled more than all the other groups. The difference between the high and low competence instructions groups was large, with Cohen d = 1.51 (e.g., Cohen, 1988; Olejnik & Algina, 2000). For greater certainty in avoiding effects due to differences among groups in the baseline recall performance, a second analysis was run excluding the 17 baseline participants with extreme scores (8 low and 9 high) — i.e. only participants scoring 14 to 20 in the baseline were considered. Following this, the same MANCOVA 4 groups×2 texts was performed on mean recall scores with baseline as covariate. The following effects emerged: instructions, F (3, 27)=7.42, p =.001, η2 =.45; text, F (1, 27) =144.10, p<.001, η2 =.84, easy M =19.48, SD =3.65, difficult M= 12.55, SD=4.10; interaction instructions× text, F (3, 27)=3.88, p =.020, η2 =.30. No significant effect of the baseline was found. Tukey post-hoc showed that high competence instructions group recalled more than all the other groups, which did not differ from each other. For the easy text, the only significant difference was between
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the high competence instructions and difficult text groups, the former recalling more than the latter. For the difficult text, the significant difference was between the high and low competence instructions groups (see Table 1 for mean values). Finally, in order to exclude the occurrence of differences due to gender, two different kinds of analysis were run. First the baseline performance of males and females was compared through a Student t test. No statistical significant difference emerged. The same MANCOVA comparing the four groups corresponding to instructions in the two texts with baseline performance as covariate was then run, considering just females. The same effects, text and instructions, emerged as statistically significant. Post-hoc analyses revealed that participants given high competence instructions scored higher than low competence participants, and that there was no difference between participants instructed to expect difficult or easy texts. Moreover, it emerged that the low competence instructions group recalled less than the easy and difficulty instructions groups, just as in the analysis run considering the whole sample of males and females. Nevertheless, to better control any possible gender effect, only a female sample has been considered in Experiment 2. 2.3. Discussion As expected, high competence instructions led to better performance than low competence instructions. This effect was confirmed in both analyses run. Moreover, in the second this difference emerged as statistically significant in general and for the difficult text. This means that a low competence instruction is particularly detrimental in the case of difficult task. In general and again for the difficult text, no difference was found between ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ task instructions, and both led to performance poorer than for the high competence instructions group. This does not necessarily mean that knowledge of task difficulty has no effect on performance: this knowledge might interact with expected competence when the recall task is undertaken. Participants expected to be competent might be stimulated by instructions stressing the difficulty of the text to memorise. But the same difficulty instruction might instead undermine performance of those expected to have low competence. The significant interaction between instructions and texts, in the second analysis, supports this argument: for a difficult text, the difference between low and high competence instructions groups increases until reaching significance. To explore this possibility of an interaction between instructions on competence and on difficulty, in Experiment 2 the two expectations were manipulated in a mixed design, the main predictions being that (i) the expectation of a difficult task should benefit participants receiving a high competence reinforcement, but not those told they had low competence, and (ii) these effects should interact with the objective difficulty of the text presented. Table 1 Mean recall of the two texts following the instructions given (between-subjects condition). Instructions
Fig. 1. Mean recall as a function of instructions in Exp 1. Maximum score = 28. The bars represent standard errors.
High competence M SD Low competence M SD Easy text M SD Difficult text M SD Note. Maximum score = 28.
N
Mean recall Easy text
Difficult text
Total
22.56 3.32
16.22 3.23
19.39 2.90
18.38 3.11
8.63 4.03
13.50 3.09
19.00 3.38
12.13 2.03
15.56 2.50
17.00 2.45
12.83 2.48
14.92 1.91
9
8
8
6
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3. Experiment 2 3.1. Method 3.1.1. Participants Forty first-year psychology students, all women (mean age 19.53 yrs, SD = 1.09), different from those of Experiment 1, participated in this experiment. They were divided into four groups of 10 participants, each given different instructions: high competence-easy texts; high competence-difficult texts; low competence-easy texts; low competence-difficult texts (see Procedure). 3.1.2. Materials The same texts as in Experiment 1 were used. 3.1.3. Design The possibility of considering four groups (high competence and difficulty expectations, low competence and difficulty expectations, high competence and easy expectations, low competence and easy expectations) was discarded and the two expectations were considered separately. Consequently, a mixed design was applied with competence expectations (high vs. low) and difficulty expectations (easy vs. difficult) between-subjects and text (easy vs. difficult) within-subjects. 3.1.4. Procedure The collective session to assess the baseline performance was the same as in Experiment 1. Seven participants scored below 14 in the baseline, thus considered low baseline performers and assigned to the low competence instructions groups (3 to the easy texts, 4 to the difficulty texts sub-groups), and 10 participants scored 21 or higher, thus considered high baseline performers and assigned to the high competence instructions groups (6 to the easy texts, 4 to the difficulty texts sub-groups). One week after the baseline session, participants were invited individually to the laboratory and given instructions in accordance with their group: “Your score in the memory test is one of the highest of the whole group. You appear to have a good memory for texts. This result, however, was obtained with only one text sample, and its result cannot be considered definitive. To assess your memory for texts more accurately, I will now present you with a further two texts easier/more difficult than last week's” (high competence and easy/difficulty texts instructions) or “Your score in the memory test is one of the lowest of the whole group. You appear to have a poor memory for texts. This result, however, was obtained with only one text sample, and its result cannot be considered definitive. To assess your memory for texts more accurately, I will now present you with a further two texts easier/more difficult than last week's” (low competence and easy/difficulty texts instructions). Participants were then presented orally with the texts, one at a time, given a 30-second interpolated task to perform, and finally asked for a written free recall and debriefed, thanked and informed as in Experiment 1.
expectations) and one within-groups variable (text: easy, difficult) was performed on the mean recall scores with the baseline performance as covariate. Baseline mean recall was 20.00 (2.98), 19.90 (2.02), 14.90 (3.57) and 14.90 (4.17) for high competence-easy texts, high competence-difficulty texts, low competence-easy texts, low competence-difficulty texts instructions groups, respectively. The following effects emerged: text, F (1, 35) = 27.04, p < .001, η2 = .43, easy M = 18.30, SD = 4.75, difficult M = 14.38, SD = 3.74; baseline recall, F (1, 35) = 11.56, p = .002, η2 = .25; and interaction among competence expectations, difficulty expectations and texts, F (1, 35) = 4.69, p = .037, η2 = .12 (see Fig. 2). Tukey post-hoc showed that with the objectively easy text, participants given high competence instructions and told the text was difficult (M = 21.80, SD = 2.74) scored higher than participants receiving low competence and easy instructions (M = 15.90, SD = 5.30, Cohen d = 1.16). The other two groups – high competence and easy instructions (M = 18.20, SD= 3.74) and low competence and difficulty instructions (M = 17.30, SD= 5.21) – did not differ from each other. With the objectively difficult text, a difference was found for easy instructions between participants given low competence (M = 11.90, SD = 4.12) and high competence instructions (M = 16.40, SD = 2.99, Cohen d = 1.07). For difficulty instructions, no difference was found in mean recall between participants instructed in high (M = 14.80, SD = 3.76) or low competence (M = 14.40, SD = 2.99). As can be seen, the two Cohen d showed a large effect size. As in Experiment 1, a further analysis was run only on participants with baseline score from 14 to 20, i.e. not considering the very low and very high baseline performers. However, the final sample was found to consist of just 23 participants and the design was a three factors: 2 (competence expectations) × 2 (difficulty expectations) × 2 (texts). Consequently, only the effect ‘text’ within-subjects emerged, F (1, 19) = 27.82, p <.001, η2 = .59, easy M = 19.13, SD = 4.38, difficult M = 13.48, SD = 3.22. No other effect reached statistical significance.
3.3. Discussion The results underline the importance of assessing the effects of expectations both separately and for their interactions, and to consider the objective difficulty of the material to memorise.
3.2. Results As for Experiment 1, two Kruskal–Wallis comparisons confirmed that the four instructions groups do not differ in pre-experiment metacognitive evaluations regarding both expected difficulty (M = 3.80, SD = 1.22) and competence (M = 3.15, SD = 1.12) in the text recall. The two ratings were highly inter-correlated (r = .51, p < .001), but none correlated with baseline performance, suggesting that no relationship occurs between general metacognitive evaluations assessed before the presentation of the target task and performance, and that these general metacognitive evaluations do not interact with the specific instructions given. The texts were then scored as in Experiment 1. A mixed design MANCOVA, with two between-groups variables (high vs. low competence expectations and high vs. low difficulty
Fig. 2. Mean recall as a function of competence and difficulty instructions in Exp 2. Maximum score = 28. The bars represent standard errors.
A. Moè / Learning and Individual Differences 19 (2009) 609–614
One noteworthy result is that, when crossing the two expectations of competence and text difficulty, the main effect ‘competence expectations’ found in Experiment 1 disappears. In contrast, a significant interaction between expectations and text difficulty appears, demonstrating that being told to be competent cannot guarantee a high memory score: difficulty of the material and expected difficulty must be considered. This means that competence expectations are not effective per se, but in complex situations cross with other variables such as those examined in this Experiment 2: expectations about difficulty and difficulty itself. It emerged that in recall, participants given high competence and difficulty instructions outperformed those given low competence and easy instructions, for an easy text. This result is perfectly in line with the hypothesis. With an objectively difficult text, the high competence outperformed the low competence group with the easy instructions. Other results of Experiment 2 require further interpretation. With more demanding material (the difficult text), the advantage of a difficulty expectation for participants instructed to have high competence is removed: with the difficulty instructions and difficult text they score the same as participants instructed to have low competence. On the other hand, the advantage of participants expecting high rather than low competence emerges with the easy instruction. Two possible explanations can be proposed: the first regards participants expecting to be very competent, the second concerns participants who are led to believe they have low competence. The first is that expecting difficulty is generally motivating, but if the task is really complex (note that mean recall is 14.38, i.e. just half the text memorised, half forgotten), too many resources are devoted to off-task thinking (‘I am able to do this. I must succeed. I have to put in the maximum effort possible.’), and too few resources are left free for the actually memorising. Alternatively or in addition, when given the difficult text and difficulty instructions, competent subjects are likely to be concerned about the risk of failure and attempt to memorise everything, thus overloading the system. The second interpretation concerns the very low score obtained with instructions of low competence and easiness. Perhaps the underlying thought is of the kind ‘They told me I am not very good at recall and gave me easier material in the hope I can do better; however, I perceive the material as difficult, hence it is true that my memory is not very good’. It is easy to believe that thinking like this would foster an inclination to resignation rather than engagement, and would absorb cognitive resources in this off-task thinking that would otherwise be devoted to the primary task of paying attention to the material and trying to memorise it. Moreover, in this condition, participants with low competence expectations might cut their effort for two reasons: (i) they believe themselves not to be able; (ii) they expect an easy task, which by definition requires less effort. The underlying belief is probably ‘they think I'm so bad at recall they give me easier texts, so I stop trying’. This lower effort can explain the low performance. Future research, involving interviewing of participants at the end of the experimental session, should allow better assessment of which of these explanations if either is correct.
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difficult text the easiness expectation proves to be a disadvantage for participants expected to have low competence. Performance of the low competence expectations group was low in the easy-expectation condition with both the objectively difficult and the easy material. Probably, perception of not recalling well for a text presented as easy decreased engagement. This suggests that it is not beneficial to suggest easy expectation to people considered low-ability, since they may consider difficulties in processing the material and/or failure to achieve as further confirmation of low competence, rather than ‘blaming’ the material or task. In contrast, presenting the material as difficult can allow failure to be ‘blamed’ on the task characteristics rather than lack of personal ability, particularly if tackling an objectively difficult text. A factor that can increase performance – and create individual differences in recall – is confronting a challenge: this can be produced by high competence instructions, either alone or coupled with a difficulty expectation, providing the material is in fact easy. Instead, when one or more of these factors is lacking, recall performance falls. These results are in line with research showing the characteristics of effective praise (Henderlong & Lepper, 2003), i.e. to boost selfefficacy, enhance feeling of competence, provide motivating information, and encourage effort attribution. Moreover, it should be noted that, in the experimental set-up here, all participants listened to the text for the same amount of time, regardless of expectations given. Consequently, the differences observed in recall performance cannot be attributed to the quantity of processing, but to the quality, this being stronger when participants are more deeply motivated. The findings of this study have clear applications in education. The specific areas of applicability would be extended through additional research exploring the motivational correlates of the more able–more difficult effect, for example by considering self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), incremental theory (Dweck, 1999), and self-worth (Covington, 1998). In addition, long-term consequences could be studied. Starting from Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), a considerable body of research (for a review see Jussim, 1986; Madon, Jussim & Eccles, 1997) has shown that students who are expected to be more intelligent receive more high competence feedback than students who are considered dull. Students understand this differential treatment and develop expectations about their ability to perform a task successfully, which can affect performance, task choice and motivation and lead to confirmation of the original expectations — an outcome that can be long-term and explain individual differences in recall as well as overall achievement. Acknowledgements I am particularly grateful to Niccoletta Caramelli for her valuable suggestions in earlier versions of the paper. I wish to thank the two anonymous referees for their discerning comments. Appendix A. Examples of texts used as materials
4. General discussion ‘The Lake’ (baseline text) The study confirmed that both high competence and difficulty instructions are effective tools for improving recall performance, since they stimulate positive expectations about personal ability to tackle a task, and work best when crossed in the most functional way, i.e., high competence — difficult texts expected and easy text presented. This effect can be given the tag more able–more difficult: its practical implications are that for best recall performance, people should expect to be competent and the task to be difficult, providing the text is sufficiently easy. In contrast, if low competence is expected, nothing is to be gained from presenting the task as easy rather than difficult, perhaps with the good intention of encouraging. For the
The tourist centre is visited every Sunday/by a colourful crowd of tourists./ It contains a small lake famous for its red seaweed./ The lake is reached via a recently opened highway/with three wide lanes in each direction./ Around the lake there are very high trees alternated with small bushes./ There is a rocky road that goes down to the lake,/ which is called Lake Road./ Tourists can visit Carpognano,/a small medieval village on a hill/and surrounded by woods./ Enormous mushrooms can be found in the woods./ There are also some hills of volcanic origin, shaped as cones./ In the spring visitors can admire the pink flamingos.
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‘The Sports Centre (easy version) The sports centre is in an area with a lot of bushes./ There is a large car park/which is surrounded by green railings./ At the entrance there is a gate/and a board displaying the rules to be observed in the centre./ The gate is painted black and has spikes on top./ There is a good athletics track/divided into nine lanes/and some stairs protected by a large shelter./ There is a small bar./ Outside there are tables and a large awning giving protection from the summer sun./ During the summer you can choose between two outdoor swimming pools of different lengths./ There are also a basket-ball court and a volley-ball court./ The court fencing is covered with advertising posters. ‘The Sports Centre (difficult version) You have arrived in the large car park of the sports centre./ You are at one corner of the centre and in front of you is the entrance./ Going straight on you will see the spectator's terrace on the left./ At a certain point you will reach the other corner of the sports centre/and see a small bar in front of you./ Turn left, follow the fence, and keep the bar behind you./ You will immediately see the terrace you saw before, to the left./ As you continue you can see the athletics track next to the terrace./ Go straight on and you will continue to see the athletics track to your left./ At the end of that side you will see the swimming pools ahead of you./ There are two, one is large, the other small./ Turn left, leaving the swimming pools behind you/and go straight on to the corner near the car park,/where there are a basket-ball court and a volley-ball court/. Note. The slashes separate the 14 idea-units. References Atkinson, J. W. (1964). An introduction to motivation. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: Freeman.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis of the behavioral sciences, 2nd ed. New York: Academic Press. Covington, M. V. (1998). The will to learn. A guide for motivating young people. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. De Beni, R., & Moè, A. (2003). Presentation modality effects in studying text. Are mental images always effective? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 309–324. Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Ann Arbor, MI: Psychology Press. Eccles, J. S., Adler, T. F., Futterman, R., Goff, S. B., Kaczala, C. M., Meece, J., et al. (1983). Expectancies, values and academic behaviors. In J. T. Spence (Ed.), Achievement and achievement motives (pp. 75–146). San Francisco, CA: Freeman. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Harter, S. (1978). Effectance motivation reconsidered: Toward a developmental model. Human Development, 21, 34–64. Henderlong, J., & Lepper, M. R. (2003). The effects of praise on children's intrinsic motivation: A review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 774–795. Herrmann, D., Raybeck, D., & Gutman, D. (1993). Improving student memory. Seattle, WA: Hogrefe & Huber. Jussim, L. (1986). Self-fulfilling prophecies: A theoretical and integrative review. Psychological Review, 93(4), 429–445. Madon, S., Jussim, L., & Eccles, J. (1997). In search of the powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(4), 791–809. Marshall, M. A., & Brown, J. D. (2006). Emotional reactions to achievement outcomes: Is it really best to expect the worst? Cognition and Emotion, 20(1), 43–63. Murphy, P. K., & Alexander, P. A. (2000). A motivated exploration of motivation terminology. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 3–53. Olejnik, S., & Algina, J. (2000). Measures of effect size for comparative studies: Applications, interpretations, and limitations. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(3), 241–286. Pajares, F. (1996). Self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings. Review of Educational Research, 66(4), 543–578. Pressley, M., Yokoi, L., Van Etten, S., & Freebern, G. (1997). Some of the reasons why preparing for exams is so hard: What can be done to make it easier? Educational Psychology Review, 9(1), 1–38. Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. New York, NY: Holt. Skaalvik, E. M. (1997). Self-enhancing and self-defeating ego orientation: Relations with task and avoidance orientation, achievement, self-perceptions, and anxiety. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(1), 71–81. Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92, 548–573. Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 54–81.
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Learning and Individual Differences j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / l i n d i f
Expectations and recall of texts: The more able–more difficult effect Angelica Moè ⁎ Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 January 2009 Received in revised form 11 July 2009 Accepted 14 August 2009 Keywords: Expectations Recall Learning
a b s t r a c t Expectations about self-competence and difficulty of a task to be undertaken can foster motivation and hence affect engagement, giving rise to individual differences in performance. This effect was examined in a memory task. An increase in recall performance following instructions about high competence was hypothesised; in addition, a modulating effect of instructions about easiness or difficulty of the material was expected. Two experiments were performed, in which expectations were established by giving instructions of high or low competence and easiness or difficulty of two texts: objectively, one easy, one difficult. The results showed that being given instructions about high competence raises performance if presented alone and if difficult texts are expected when the actual text is easy: the more able–more difficult effect. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Ability to recall information is vital for everyday cognition, academic achievement, and performing a wide range of tasks and activities. It becomes even more important when information is presented orally, thus precluding review, in contrast with use of written texts, which can be re-read and checked for overlooked points, allowing better assimilation. Individual differences in recall depend on a wide range of factors such as abilities, strategies used, metacognitive skills, personal elaboration, organization of material and study habits (e.g., Herrmann, Raybeck, & Gutman, 1993; Pressley, Yokoi, Van Etten, & Freebern, 1997). All these cognitive and metacognitive activities are sustained by motivation. There are many motivational theories (for a review see Murphy & Alexander, 2000). Of these, I explore the role of expectations, major motivational drives because they sustain engagement, if positive, or favour disengagement and effort withdrawal, if negative. The focus is on ‘expected competence’ and ‘expected difficulty of task’. Expected competence affects motivation and performance: the more competent people consider themselves in tackling a task, the better they perform (Bandura, 1997; Pajares, 1996). When people perceive themselves as being capable, and assess a task as having medium difficulty, they create positive expectations for themselves and perform well on the task (Eccles et al., 1983; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Instead, lack of competence decreases motivation and performance, as the result of unwillingness to reveal the limits of personal ability (Skaalvik, 1997).
⁎ Department of General Psychology, Via Venezia, 8, 35131 Padua, Italy. Tel.: +39 49 8276689; fax: +39 49 8276600. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1041-6080/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2009.08.002
Expected difficulty in a task creates a challenge (Harter, 1978) and interacts with expected competence. According to Atkinson's (1964) need for achievement theory (nAch), people are motivated to tackle tasks of medium–high difficulty when they perceive themselves as competent and they believe to succeed. In addition, expected difficulty can reassure and free from fear of failure: unsuccessful performance can be attributed to the task difficulty not lack of ability (Weiner, 1985). All these effects of expected competence and expected difficulty on performance have never been studied with recall of orally presented texts, despite this representing a very common learning situation for students listening to lessons and lectures, and also for people in everyday situations. When approaching a task, a person can have many expectations about personal abilities or attitudes and task characteristics, and these can interact. Experimentally, they can be independently manipulated to ensure better isolation, allowing study of the individual effects. Two experiments were therefore planned. Experiment 1 considered the effects of instructions separately, following a between-subjects design. Participants were told they had high/low competence in recalling, or that the texts would be easier or more difficult than the previous one. Experiment 2 was run following a within-subjects design. Participants were given both kinds of instruction about competence in recalling and about text difficulty, thus allowing comparison of the four combinations of different kinds of expectation. Of course, the objective difficulty of the material is of great importance. In natural conditions one can expect a difficult task to be easy or vice versa. The consequences on motivation and performance should be different, because expectations affect effort expenditure and modulate affect in performing the task, and both effort and positive affect lead to good performance (e.g. Marshall & Brown, 2006). For this reason, two texts were used, one objectively more difficult than the other, with the material difficulty unknown to participants.
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The aim was to demonstrate, in a free recall task, that instructions inducing high competence and difficulty expectations raise performance. The novelty of the research was to carry this out on a free recall task, considering both separate and joint effects of expected competence and difficulty, and manipulating the objective difficulty of the material. Predictions were that: 1) high competence expectations encourage better performance more than low competence expectations, since they enhance self-efficacy, self-confidence and effort spent; 2) instructions about easiness or difficulty of a task are less effective than those about competence. As suggested by the theories of both Harter (1978) and Atkinson (1964), expected difficulty is not a challenge per se, but becomes such for people who expect to be competent. On the contrary, expecting to be competent can be sufficiently motivating to cause an increase in performance even when the difficulty of the material is unknown (Bandura, 1997); 3) expectation of difficulty raises performance when participants receive high rather than low competence instructions, because people expecting to be competent are more likely to consider a difficulty expectation as motivating than those who expect low competence. 2. Experiment 1 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Forty-eight first-year psychology students, 40 females and 8 males (mean age 19.40 yrs, SD = 1.58) participated on a voluntary basis. They were divided into four groups of 12 participants, each given different instructions: high competence (11 females, 1 male); low competence (10 females, 2 males); easy texts (8 females, 4 males); difficult texts (11 females, 1 male). See Procedure, Section 2.1.4, for details. 2.1.2. Materials The materials consisted of a 112-word text entitled ‘The Lake’ for the baseline, and four texts from 122 to 167 words in length for the experimental session. These latter were entitled ‘The Sports Centre’ and ‘The Zoo’ and had been devised for a previous study with different aims (De Beni & Moè, 2003) in two versions: easy, i.e. recalled higher; and difficult, i.e. recalled lower. The means obtained by De Beni and Moè (2003) were 20.78 (SD = 3.66) and 16.74 (SD = 3.56) for the easy and difficult texts, respectively. All texts comprised 14 idea-units selected by two independent judges as expressing a single concept. Discrepancies were resolved by a third judge. See Appendix A for the baseline text (‘The Lake’) and the two versions of the ‘The Sports Centre’. 2.1.3. Design A mixed design was applied with groups (corresponding to the four expectations) between-subjects and text (easy vs. difficult) within-subjects. 2.1.4. Procedure The week before the experiment, a collective session was held to assess a number of baseline measures. First, pre-experimental selfratings of expected difficulty and competence in recall were assessed to verify that the four groups corresponding to instructions do not differ in these metacognitive evaluations. Participants were introduced to the task they were to be given, i.e. recall a short text. The instructions were “you will be presented with a 1-minute text played from a tape recorder. You have to listen to it very carefully. At the end, you will be asked to write down a free recall on paper. Next week you
will be told your score individually, and will be set a similar recall task”. They were then asked to write down their ratings for the following two questions on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much): a) How easy do you think the recall task will be?, and b) How much do you think you will recall? Second, they listened to a tape-recording (1 min and 15 s) of the ‘The Lake’ text to memorise its contents. At the end of the presentation and after a short-interpolated task to avoid recency effects (counting downward from a 3-digit number for 30 s), participants were given 5 min to write a free recall of the text. The recall sheets were collected, and the participants thanked and asked to participate in the second session the following week, during which they would be told their personal score. Recall sheets were scored by two independent judges. Discrepancies in the scores assigned were resolved by a third judge. Two points were assigned for each idea-unit well recalled (almost verbatim), and one for each partially recalled. These partial scores were summed to give a total score. Maximum theoretical score was 28 (from 14 ideaunits). A frequencies analysis was performed to identify a group of low-scoring participants (n = 8, recall range 9–13, less than half the text recalled) and a group of high-scoring participants (n = 9, recall range 21–26), to avoid assigning the former to the high competence instructions group and the latter to the low competence instructions group, and so avoid cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). A second reason was to create a more ecological situation. In fact, participants scoring very low or very high in baseline may have perceived their general level of performance and found it hard to believe they had really scored higher or lower than expected. Moreover, in natural situations, they would have received feedback deriving from extremely low or high performance. For groups instructed on easiness or difficulty of the texts to be presented, the experimenter randomly assigned them to conditions on arrival at the laboratory, without looking at the baseline performance. Of the 8 baseline low-scoring participants, 4 were in fact assigned to the low competence instructions group and 4 to the difficulty text instructions group. The 9 baseline high-scoring participants were assigned to the following instructions groups: 3 to the high competence, 4 to the easy texts, and 2 to the difficulty texts. In the analysis, effects due to the baseline level of performance has been resolved in two ways: a) using the baseline mean recall as a covariate, and b) running a second analysis without considering the 17 participants scoring very high/low in the baseline. For the experimental session in the following week, participants were invited individually to the laboratory, where they were given instructions according to their group: “Your score in the memory test is one of the highest/lowest of the whole group. You appear to have a good/poor memory for texts. This result, however, was obtained with only one text sample, and its result cannot be considered definitive. To assess your memory for texts more accurately, I will now present you with a further two texts similar to last week's” (high/low competence instructions group) or “I will now present you with two texts similar to last week's but easier/more difficult, in order to assess your memory for texts more accurately” (easy/difficulty text instructions group). Following this, the participants were told that after the presentation of each text (1 min 30 s) they would have to write down what they remembered (5 min) after a 30-second interpolated task (as in the baseline). The texts were then presented one at a time from taperecordings, in one of the following sequences: Sports Centre easy–Zoo difficult; Sports Centre difficult–Zoo easy; Zoo easy–Sports Centre difficult; Zoo difficult–Sports Centre easy. Finally, participants were debriefed, thanked and informed about their real performance, the aim of the research and some of the theoretical considerations. 2.2. Results As a preliminary step, two Kruskal–Wallis comparisons were run to compare the four groups' metacognitive evaluations. They were both n.s.,
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p >.05, confirming that the four groups do not differ in pre-experiment personal evaluations regarding both difficulty (M= 4.19, SD= 1.02) and competence (M=3.71, SD =1.25) in recall of texts. The two ratings were highly inter-correlated (r =.59, p <.001), but none correlated with baseline performance. In other words, there was no relationship between performance and metacognitive evaluations, i.e. general beliefs about the task of recalling a passage assessed before presentation of the target task. This finding excluded the possibility that the specific task instructions given after baseline assessment and before presentation of the target task interacted with pre-existing beliefs. Experimental texts were scored as for the baseline, assigning one or two points for each recalled idea-unit and then summing these partial scores. Judges were blind to conditions. Maximum theoretical score was 28 (from 14 idea-units). A mixed design MANCOVA, with one between-groups variable (instructions: high competence, low competence, easiness, difficulty) and one within-groups variable (text: easy, difficult) was performed on the mean recall scores. As the groups differed in baseline recall performance, the mean recall scores of the baseline performance were added as covariate. Baseline mean recall was 19.08 (1.73), 14.17 (2.12), 15.50 (3.50) and 20.25 (2.49) for instructions groups high competence, low competence, difficult texts, easy texts, respectively. The following effects emerged: instructions, F (3, 43) = 6.86, p = .001, η2 = .32; text, F (1, 43) = 5.70, p = .021, η2 = .12, easy M = 18.75, SD = 3.62, difficult M = 13.17, SD= 4.49; baseline recall, F (1, 43) = 4.67, p = .036, η2 = .10. There was no significant interaction. Mean recall and standard deviations (in brackets) of the four groups were 19.13 (2.63), 12.75 (2.87), 15.79 (2.17) and 16.17 (2.72) for instructions of high competence, low competence, difficulty and easiness, respectively, see Fig. 1. Tukey post-hoc showed that the low competence instructions group recalled less than the easiness and difficulty instructions groups, which did not differ from one another; the high competence instructions group recalled more than all the other groups. The difference between the high and low competence instructions groups was large, with Cohen d = 1.51 (e.g., Cohen, 1988; Olejnik & Algina, 2000). For greater certainty in avoiding effects due to differences among groups in the baseline recall performance, a second analysis was run excluding the 17 baseline participants with extreme scores (8 low and 9 high) — i.e. only participants scoring 14 to 20 in the baseline were considered. Following this, the same MANCOVA 4 groups×2 texts was performed on mean recall scores with baseline as covariate. The following effects emerged: instructions, F (3, 27)=7.42, p =.001, η2 =.45; text, F (1, 27) =144.10, p<.001, η2 =.84, easy M =19.48, SD =3.65, difficult M= 12.55, SD=4.10; interaction instructions× text, F (3, 27)=3.88, p =.020, η2 =.30. No significant effect of the baseline was found. Tukey post-hoc showed that high competence instructions group recalled more than all the other groups, which did not differ from each other. For the easy text, the only significant difference was between
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the high competence instructions and difficult text groups, the former recalling more than the latter. For the difficult text, the significant difference was between the high and low competence instructions groups (see Table 1 for mean values). Finally, in order to exclude the occurrence of differences due to gender, two different kinds of analysis were run. First the baseline performance of males and females was compared through a Student t test. No statistical significant difference emerged. The same MANCOVA comparing the four groups corresponding to instructions in the two texts with baseline performance as covariate was then run, considering just females. The same effects, text and instructions, emerged as statistically significant. Post-hoc analyses revealed that participants given high competence instructions scored higher than low competence participants, and that there was no difference between participants instructed to expect difficult or easy texts. Moreover, it emerged that the low competence instructions group recalled less than the easy and difficulty instructions groups, just as in the analysis run considering the whole sample of males and females. Nevertheless, to better control any possible gender effect, only a female sample has been considered in Experiment 2. 2.3. Discussion As expected, high competence instructions led to better performance than low competence instructions. This effect was confirmed in both analyses run. Moreover, in the second this difference emerged as statistically significant in general and for the difficult text. This means that a low competence instruction is particularly detrimental in the case of difficult task. In general and again for the difficult text, no difference was found between ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ task instructions, and both led to performance poorer than for the high competence instructions group. This does not necessarily mean that knowledge of task difficulty has no effect on performance: this knowledge might interact with expected competence when the recall task is undertaken. Participants expected to be competent might be stimulated by instructions stressing the difficulty of the text to memorise. But the same difficulty instruction might instead undermine performance of those expected to have low competence. The significant interaction between instructions and texts, in the second analysis, supports this argument: for a difficult text, the difference between low and high competence instructions groups increases until reaching significance. To explore this possibility of an interaction between instructions on competence and on difficulty, in Experiment 2 the two expectations were manipulated in a mixed design, the main predictions being that (i) the expectation of a difficult task should benefit participants receiving a high competence reinforcement, but not those told they had low competence, and (ii) these effects should interact with the objective difficulty of the text presented. Table 1 Mean recall of the two texts following the instructions given (between-subjects condition). Instructions
Fig. 1. Mean recall as a function of instructions in Exp 1. Maximum score = 28. The bars represent standard errors.
High competence M SD Low competence M SD Easy text M SD Difficult text M SD Note. Maximum score = 28.
N
Mean recall Easy text
Difficult text
Total
22.56 3.32
16.22 3.23
19.39 2.90
18.38 3.11
8.63 4.03
13.50 3.09
19.00 3.38
12.13 2.03
15.56 2.50
17.00 2.45
12.83 2.48
14.92 1.91
9
8
8
6
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3. Experiment 2 3.1. Method 3.1.1. Participants Forty first-year psychology students, all women (mean age 19.53 yrs, SD = 1.09), different from those of Experiment 1, participated in this experiment. They were divided into four groups of 10 participants, each given different instructions: high competence-easy texts; high competence-difficult texts; low competence-easy texts; low competence-difficult texts (see Procedure). 3.1.2. Materials The same texts as in Experiment 1 were used. 3.1.3. Design The possibility of considering four groups (high competence and difficulty expectations, low competence and difficulty expectations, high competence and easy expectations, low competence and easy expectations) was discarded and the two expectations were considered separately. Consequently, a mixed design was applied with competence expectations (high vs. low) and difficulty expectations (easy vs. difficult) between-subjects and text (easy vs. difficult) within-subjects. 3.1.4. Procedure The collective session to assess the baseline performance was the same as in Experiment 1. Seven participants scored below 14 in the baseline, thus considered low baseline performers and assigned to the low competence instructions groups (3 to the easy texts, 4 to the difficulty texts sub-groups), and 10 participants scored 21 or higher, thus considered high baseline performers and assigned to the high competence instructions groups (6 to the easy texts, 4 to the difficulty texts sub-groups). One week after the baseline session, participants were invited individually to the laboratory and given instructions in accordance with their group: “Your score in the memory test is one of the highest of the whole group. You appear to have a good memory for texts. This result, however, was obtained with only one text sample, and its result cannot be considered definitive. To assess your memory for texts more accurately, I will now present you with a further two texts easier/more difficult than last week's” (high competence and easy/difficulty texts instructions) or “Your score in the memory test is one of the lowest of the whole group. You appear to have a poor memory for texts. This result, however, was obtained with only one text sample, and its result cannot be considered definitive. To assess your memory for texts more accurately, I will now present you with a further two texts easier/more difficult than last week's” (low competence and easy/difficulty texts instructions). Participants were then presented orally with the texts, one at a time, given a 30-second interpolated task to perform, and finally asked for a written free recall and debriefed, thanked and informed as in Experiment 1.
expectations) and one within-groups variable (text: easy, difficult) was performed on the mean recall scores with the baseline performance as covariate. Baseline mean recall was 20.00 (2.98), 19.90 (2.02), 14.90 (3.57) and 14.90 (4.17) for high competence-easy texts, high competence-difficulty texts, low competence-easy texts, low competence-difficulty texts instructions groups, respectively. The following effects emerged: text, F (1, 35) = 27.04, p < .001, η2 = .43, easy M = 18.30, SD = 4.75, difficult M = 14.38, SD = 3.74; baseline recall, F (1, 35) = 11.56, p = .002, η2 = .25; and interaction among competence expectations, difficulty expectations and texts, F (1, 35) = 4.69, p = .037, η2 = .12 (see Fig. 2). Tukey post-hoc showed that with the objectively easy text, participants given high competence instructions and told the text was difficult (M = 21.80, SD = 2.74) scored higher than participants receiving low competence and easy instructions (M = 15.90, SD = 5.30, Cohen d = 1.16). The other two groups – high competence and easy instructions (M = 18.20, SD= 3.74) and low competence and difficulty instructions (M = 17.30, SD= 5.21) – did not differ from each other. With the objectively difficult text, a difference was found for easy instructions between participants given low competence (M = 11.90, SD = 4.12) and high competence instructions (M = 16.40, SD = 2.99, Cohen d = 1.07). For difficulty instructions, no difference was found in mean recall between participants instructed in high (M = 14.80, SD = 3.76) or low competence (M = 14.40, SD = 2.99). As can be seen, the two Cohen d showed a large effect size. As in Experiment 1, a further analysis was run only on participants with baseline score from 14 to 20, i.e. not considering the very low and very high baseline performers. However, the final sample was found to consist of just 23 participants and the design was a three factors: 2 (competence expectations) × 2 (difficulty expectations) × 2 (texts). Consequently, only the effect ‘text’ within-subjects emerged, F (1, 19) = 27.82, p <.001, η2 = .59, easy M = 19.13, SD = 4.38, difficult M = 13.48, SD = 3.22. No other effect reached statistical significance.
3.3. Discussion The results underline the importance of assessing the effects of expectations both separately and for their interactions, and to consider the objective difficulty of the material to memorise.
3.2. Results As for Experiment 1, two Kruskal–Wallis comparisons confirmed that the four instructions groups do not differ in pre-experiment metacognitive evaluations regarding both expected difficulty (M = 3.80, SD = 1.22) and competence (M = 3.15, SD = 1.12) in the text recall. The two ratings were highly inter-correlated (r = .51, p < .001), but none correlated with baseline performance, suggesting that no relationship occurs between general metacognitive evaluations assessed before the presentation of the target task and performance, and that these general metacognitive evaluations do not interact with the specific instructions given. The texts were then scored as in Experiment 1. A mixed design MANCOVA, with two between-groups variables (high vs. low competence expectations and high vs. low difficulty
Fig. 2. Mean recall as a function of competence and difficulty instructions in Exp 2. Maximum score = 28. The bars represent standard errors.
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One noteworthy result is that, when crossing the two expectations of competence and text difficulty, the main effect ‘competence expectations’ found in Experiment 1 disappears. In contrast, a significant interaction between expectations and text difficulty appears, demonstrating that being told to be competent cannot guarantee a high memory score: difficulty of the material and expected difficulty must be considered. This means that competence expectations are not effective per se, but in complex situations cross with other variables such as those examined in this Experiment 2: expectations about difficulty and difficulty itself. It emerged that in recall, participants given high competence and difficulty instructions outperformed those given low competence and easy instructions, for an easy text. This result is perfectly in line with the hypothesis. With an objectively difficult text, the high competence outperformed the low competence group with the easy instructions. Other results of Experiment 2 require further interpretation. With more demanding material (the difficult text), the advantage of a difficulty expectation for participants instructed to have high competence is removed: with the difficulty instructions and difficult text they score the same as participants instructed to have low competence. On the other hand, the advantage of participants expecting high rather than low competence emerges with the easy instruction. Two possible explanations can be proposed: the first regards participants expecting to be very competent, the second concerns participants who are led to believe they have low competence. The first is that expecting difficulty is generally motivating, but if the task is really complex (note that mean recall is 14.38, i.e. just half the text memorised, half forgotten), too many resources are devoted to off-task thinking (‘I am able to do this. I must succeed. I have to put in the maximum effort possible.’), and too few resources are left free for the actually memorising. Alternatively or in addition, when given the difficult text and difficulty instructions, competent subjects are likely to be concerned about the risk of failure and attempt to memorise everything, thus overloading the system. The second interpretation concerns the very low score obtained with instructions of low competence and easiness. Perhaps the underlying thought is of the kind ‘They told me I am not very good at recall and gave me easier material in the hope I can do better; however, I perceive the material as difficult, hence it is true that my memory is not very good’. It is easy to believe that thinking like this would foster an inclination to resignation rather than engagement, and would absorb cognitive resources in this off-task thinking that would otherwise be devoted to the primary task of paying attention to the material and trying to memorise it. Moreover, in this condition, participants with low competence expectations might cut their effort for two reasons: (i) they believe themselves not to be able; (ii) they expect an easy task, which by definition requires less effort. The underlying belief is probably ‘they think I'm so bad at recall they give me easier texts, so I stop trying’. This lower effort can explain the low performance. Future research, involving interviewing of participants at the end of the experimental session, should allow better assessment of which of these explanations if either is correct.
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difficult text the easiness expectation proves to be a disadvantage for participants expected to have low competence. Performance of the low competence expectations group was low in the easy-expectation condition with both the objectively difficult and the easy material. Probably, perception of not recalling well for a text presented as easy decreased engagement. This suggests that it is not beneficial to suggest easy expectation to people considered low-ability, since they may consider difficulties in processing the material and/or failure to achieve as further confirmation of low competence, rather than ‘blaming’ the material or task. In contrast, presenting the material as difficult can allow failure to be ‘blamed’ on the task characteristics rather than lack of personal ability, particularly if tackling an objectively difficult text. A factor that can increase performance – and create individual differences in recall – is confronting a challenge: this can be produced by high competence instructions, either alone or coupled with a difficulty expectation, providing the material is in fact easy. Instead, when one or more of these factors is lacking, recall performance falls. These results are in line with research showing the characteristics of effective praise (Henderlong & Lepper, 2003), i.e. to boost selfefficacy, enhance feeling of competence, provide motivating information, and encourage effort attribution. Moreover, it should be noted that, in the experimental set-up here, all participants listened to the text for the same amount of time, regardless of expectations given. Consequently, the differences observed in recall performance cannot be attributed to the quantity of processing, but to the quality, this being stronger when participants are more deeply motivated. The findings of this study have clear applications in education. The specific areas of applicability would be extended through additional research exploring the motivational correlates of the more able–more difficult effect, for example by considering self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), incremental theory (Dweck, 1999), and self-worth (Covington, 1998). In addition, long-term consequences could be studied. Starting from Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), a considerable body of research (for a review see Jussim, 1986; Madon, Jussim & Eccles, 1997) has shown that students who are expected to be more intelligent receive more high competence feedback than students who are considered dull. Students understand this differential treatment and develop expectations about their ability to perform a task successfully, which can affect performance, task choice and motivation and lead to confirmation of the original expectations — an outcome that can be long-term and explain individual differences in recall as well as overall achievement. Acknowledgements I am particularly grateful to Niccoletta Caramelli for her valuable suggestions in earlier versions of the paper. I wish to thank the two anonymous referees for their discerning comments. Appendix A. Examples of texts used as materials
4. General discussion ‘The Lake’ (baseline text) The study confirmed that both high competence and difficulty instructions are effective tools for improving recall performance, since they stimulate positive expectations about personal ability to tackle a task, and work best when crossed in the most functional way, i.e., high competence — difficult texts expected and easy text presented. This effect can be given the tag more able–more difficult: its practical implications are that for best recall performance, people should expect to be competent and the task to be difficult, providing the text is sufficiently easy. In contrast, if low competence is expected, nothing is to be gained from presenting the task as easy rather than difficult, perhaps with the good intention of encouraging. For the
The tourist centre is visited every Sunday/by a colourful crowd of tourists./ It contains a small lake famous for its red seaweed./ The lake is reached via a recently opened highway/with three wide lanes in each direction./ Around the lake there are very high trees alternated with small bushes./ There is a rocky road that goes down to the lake,/ which is called Lake Road./ Tourists can visit Carpognano,/a small medieval village on a hill/and surrounded by woods./ Enormous mushrooms can be found in the woods./ There are also some hills of volcanic origin, shaped as cones./ In the spring visitors can admire the pink flamingos.
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‘The Sports Centre (easy version) The sports centre is in an area with a lot of bushes./ There is a large car park/which is surrounded by green railings./ At the entrance there is a gate/and a board displaying the rules to be observed in the centre./ The gate is painted black and has spikes on top./ There is a good athletics track/divided into nine lanes/and some stairs protected by a large shelter./ There is a small bar./ Outside there are tables and a large awning giving protection from the summer sun./ During the summer you can choose between two outdoor swimming pools of different lengths./ There are also a basket-ball court and a volley-ball court./ The court fencing is covered with advertising posters. ‘The Sports Centre (difficult version) You have arrived in the large car park of the sports centre./ You are at one corner of the centre and in front of you is the entrance./ Going straight on you will see the spectator's terrace on the left./ At a certain point you will reach the other corner of the sports centre/and see a small bar in front of you./ Turn left, follow the fence, and keep the bar behind you./ You will immediately see the terrace you saw before, to the left./ As you continue you can see the athletics track next to the terrace./ Go straight on and you will continue to see the athletics track to your left./ At the end of that side you will see the swimming pools ahead of you./ There are two, one is large, the other small./ Turn left, leaving the swimming pools behind you/and go straight on to the corner near the car park,/where there are a basket-ball court and a volley-ball court/. Note. The slashes separate the 14 idea-units. References Atkinson, J. W. (1964). An introduction to motivation. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: Freeman.
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