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Cognition and Motivation Exam Notes
1. Define distributed cognition, dual coding, episodic memory vs. semantic memory, intrinsic
motivation, learning strategy, locus of control, Meta cognition, Meta cognitive regulation,
personal interest, self-efficacy, situated knowledge, volition. Explain the importance of each
and give an educational example of its use.
1. Distributed Cognition:
Definition: is the interaction of the thinking of many people.
Importance: different people bring prior knowledge, which foster powerful interpretations and
understandings. In the group, people would learn from each other and also would complement
the knowledge of each other by telling them things they might not know.
Educational Example: a teacher can provide conversational starters and questions that would
allow the children to begin a conversation while discussing a story.
2. Dual Coding:
Definition: This is a theory by Paivio that states LTM has two means of representing knowledge:
a verbal system incorporates knowledge expressed in language and an imaginal system that
stores visual and spatial information. These systems are interrelated, a verbal code can be
converted to an imaginal code and vice versa; however, the verbal system is suited for abstract
information and the imaginal system is used to represent concrete objects or events.
Importance: When recalling lists of concrete and abstract words people recall concrete words
better than abstract ones. This is because concrete words are stored visually and imaginally;
whereas, abstract words are stored only verbally. In recalling, people draw on both memory
systems for concrete words, but only on verbal system for abstract words. The importance is that
students should be taught to use both systems whenever possible for better recall. Knowledge
can be stored both verbally and pictorially. Dual coded knowledge is recalled better.
Educational Example: Teachers should both explanation and demonstration. The use of
multiple modes to present information benefit students, such as concrete objects in geography
classes, science classes, and art classes. Use pictures when describing places when teaching
history. Use of manipulatives, audio visual aids, and computer graphics facilitate memory and
learning.
3. Semantic Memory vs. Episodic Memory:
Definition: Tulving made the distinction between these two types of memory. This is a type of
memory in the LTM. SM is knowledge of the world that is now independent of specific
experiences. EM is memory of personally experienced events. SM has memory of cats in
general; EM is that of specific cats such as a pet cat. Distinctions:
Semantic Knowledge
Episodic Knowledge
Point of reference is the world
point of reference of is the self
(is this knowledge true about the world)
(Is this knowledge true of me)
SM is not coded as when the info was acquired
EM is coded as when info was acquired
SM is unlikely to be forgotten
EM is likely to be forgotten
Recall is not context bound
recall is context bound; in other context
recall may not occur
Semantic knowledge is known
Episodic knowledge is remembered.
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Both function in cognition; although, people make general associations of a thing such as
universities, they also have specific memories of the one they attended. Thus both types of
knowledge are used during thinking about university issues.
Importance: EM memory is important in building a history of the individual. Pleasant memories
can motivate and uplift a person, whereas, unpleasant memories may evoke feelings of sadness.
Educational Example:
4. Intrinsic Motivation
Definition: is a desire to engage in an activity for no obvious reward except task engagement
itself.
Importance: People who are engaged in intrinsically motivated become totally involved in those
activities. They do not seek reward. The activity itself is a reward. Reward comes from working
on the task, feelings of competence, control, self-satisfaction, task success, or pride in one’s
work.
Educational Example: intrinsic motivation involves perceptions of control and competence.
Teacher’s goal should be to help students master difficult tasks. Begin by using extrinsic
motivation, i.e., offer a reward to those students who are a bit slow in doing a task within a time
frame. Work on building their pride in that accomplishment. Reward can be more computer time,
verbal praise, or special notes to parents. Gradually do intermittent rewards and decrease to allow
students to focus on their work. When students are able to accomplish the task in the time span,
they would learn about their capabilities and their ability to control the situation. The pride that
comes from successfully completing a task intrinsically motivates the student to continue to
perform well.
5. Learning Strategy:
Definition: Learning strategies are cognitive plans oriented toward successful task performance.
Importance: Learning strategies are useful because they enable students to select and organize
information, rehearse material, relate new material to information in memory, and enhance
meaningfulness of material. They also give learners better control over information processing. It
also assists encoding of information in each of the phases.
Educational Example: in a junior high school history class, the teacher can show students
various ways to organize material to be studied, the text, class notes, and supplementary
readings. He can show them how to create new notes that integrate material from the various
sources and demonstrate how to create a time line and incorporate all the related material in a
sequenced list of events covered in the unit.
6. Locus of Control: - an attributional concept; attributions-perceived causes of outcomes.
Definition: According to Rotter, LOC is a generalized expectancy whether responses influence
the attainment of outcomes, such as, success and rewards. Others believe that LOC may vary
depending on the situation. There are two types, external locus of control i.e., people believe that
outcomes occur independently of their behave and internal locus of control, i.e., outcomes are
highly dependent of one’s behavior.
Importance: LOC is important in achievement context because expectancy beliefs may affect
behavior. Students who believe that they have control over their successes and failures would
exert more in academic tasks, work harder, and persist than students who believe their efforts
have little impact on outcomes. Eventually, effort and persistence promote achievement.
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Educational Example: Provide attributional feedback to students for their successes promote
achievement expectancies; feedback should be credible. For example, if a student has difficulty
on multiplication problems, use past successes to build confidence in learning. Tell student that
the problem seems hard, but you can do it because you have all the prior knowledge. Just work
hard and you will do fine. Encourage student as she does the task, you are doing well, you
completed the first step; you did that so quickly and so on.
7. Meta Cognition:
Definition: MC is the deliberate conscious control of cognitive activity; it is knowledge about
and awareness of one’s thinking. It entails two sets of skills. One is to understand what skill,
strategies, and resources a task requires. The other is to know how and when to use these skills
and strategies to complete the task successfully.
Importance: MC is important because it facilitates learning. When students know what to learn,
when, where, and why to use strategies to enhance that learning, they increase their success rate.
Research studies show that students who were low in ability, but used meta-cognitive skills
performed on par or in some cases better that students of higher ability.
Educational Example: To enhance student’s listening comprehension, a teacher might include
listening to an enjoyable story, a set of clear directions, and a social studies lecture. For each
item, the teacher could ask students why they would listen in that setting. For story, it would be
enjoyment, specific elements for directions, and concepts and facts for social studies. He could
then work with students to develop listening skills, such as retelling the story, taking notes, and
visualizing. To develop conditional knowledge, the teacher could discuss which listening
technique seemed most appropriate for each situation.
Metacognition vs. Strategy:
Definition: Strategy is a cognitive operation that is important to carry out a task. One cognitive
operation leads to a sequence of interdependent ones. They achieve cognitive purposes such as
memorizing and are conscious and controllable activities.
Example: An example is cumulative-rehearsal fast finish, which is a memory strategy. In this,
students are given a number of items to remember. They rehearse each prior item with the new
one. They realize that the immediate items are in STM and proceed to recall the earlier ones.
Compare/contrast with MC: MC has 3 components namely, procedural-how to do things,
declarative-knowledge about things, and conditional knowledge-when and why to do things.
Strategy is the conditional aspect of metacognition,.. It is important to teach students when and
where to use strategies. Strategies can be taught, but there is no guarantee that students would
carry out strategies they learn. However, when students are taught the utility of it, when, where
to use a strategy, there is transfer of strategy use to another task.
8. Meta cognitive Regulation:
Definition: Meta cognitive regulation refers to a set of activities that help students control their
learning. There are three components to this: a. Planning, b. Monitoring, c. Evaluating.
Importance: It improves performance in many ways such as, better use of attentional resources,
better use of existing strategies, and a greater awareness of comprehension breakdown.
Educational Example: a teacher might give students a list to memorize to improve their
memory skills. She could work with them on recollection by teaching various ways to
reconstruct the list of items based on partial cues. The students might be encouraged to devise
various ways, such as, putting items in categories, visualizing a picture that contains the items,
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associate items with a task or setting, make a poem or a story with the items, or using acronyms.
The teacher could then work with the students to see which technique works best for each
student and with which type of memory task.
9. Personal Interest: (related to achievement motivation)
Definition: Personal Interest is a personality trait or characteristic of the individual that is a
relatively stable (over time) and enduring disposition. This PI is usually directed to some specific
activity or topic e.g. an interest in sports, music, dance or computers. PI is in contrast to
curiosity, which is an individual trait that is more diffusely directed, i.e. curious about many
things. Other researchers have measured PI as a preference for certain topics, “I prefer English to
Science” or a general liking for the subject area, I like science. And sometimes, importance or
personal significance of the topic, Math is important to me.
Importance: Research on personal interest has often used self-report instruments like
questionnaires. Students are asked to rate various topics or activities on a Likert-scaled format. In
terms of cognitive outcomes, personal interest is generally related positively to measures of
memory, attention, comprehension, deeper cognitive engagement, thinking, and achievement.
Preschoolers’ interest in different activities predicts their attention, recognition, and recall for
these objects at a later point in time. Research using experimental and correlational designs has
shown that college students’ personal interest was positively related to the use of deeper
cognitive processing strategies such as elaboration, seeking information when facing a problem,
engaging in critical thinking, self-reported time and effort investment. Moreover, PI was
negatively related to use of surface processing strategy, rehearsal. PI is long lasting and is stable
over time.
Educational Example: 1. it is difficult to adapt instruction to personal interests; rather it may be
easier to create situational interest with some of these SI stimulating personal interest. Provide
some choice of topics based on personal interest. Provision of some choice increases motivation.
In assigning geography projects, a teacher can allow students to choose their own topic or area of
study based on their personal interests. A place may have meaning for them and allowing them
to explore it would make them more engaged.
2. Another way is to build and integrate student personal interest in designing lessons. Apart
from diverse personal interests, students do have some common interests. When teachers connect
the lesson content to personal interests or common interests of the students, it can facilitate
attention. For example, plan math activities around a game students like such as baseball, such
as, batting averages, slugging percentage, and run average.
Compare to Situational Interest: situational interest is the experience of interest as a function
of contextual features, i.e. how features of the environment generate situational interest (an
interesting lecture, a fascinating speaker, a dramatic film). This is not long lasting and does not
inculcate stable personal interest.
Educational Example: use original source materials. Instead of only a textbook, a teacher can
use other books to teach a subject. This would create more interest in the students. Another way
to create situational interest is to use variety and novelty in teaching. Do not have the same
format or same task throughout the term.
10. Self-efficacy:
Definition: Self-efficacy refers to personal beliefs about one’s capacities to learn or perform
actions at designated levels. It is a belief about what one is capable of doing.
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Importance: Self-efficacy is domain specific, i.e., a student may have self=efficacy in math, but
not in reading. It is different from ability and research shows that students with high self-efficacy
solve more problems correctly and would rework problems they missed regardless of ability
compared to students with low self-efficacy. Self-efficacy influences choice of activities;
students with low self-efficacy may avoid attempting difficult tasks; whereas, students with high
self-efficacy would expend more effort and persist longer.
Educational Example: Teachers can use peer models to improve self-efficacy in students. They
can point out the concentration and hard work of the models. For example, as a teacher moves
around the room monitoring students’ activities, she can refer to models whose work other
students can emulate. For example, “see how well Jane is working, I am sure you can do as
well”.
11. Situated Knowledge:
Definition: Situated knowledge refers to the notion that knowledge is acquired in a context,
which is centered on specific activities. It is in part a product of the activity, context, and culture
in which it is developed and used.
Importance: Activity, context, and culture facilitate learning. These situations allow the student
to see how knowledge is acquired and the value of it compared to learning in an abstract way.
Situated knowledge allows members of a group to pick up the relevant jargon, imitate behavior,
and act according to the norms of the group.
Educational Example: A teacher can use coins to help her students understand multiplication
problems. For example, use nickels and coins to make 75 cents. She will help students come up
with various methods to solve this problem. In phase two, she can make them create stories for
multiplication problems such as there are 15 jars with five colored balls in each. In this way, they
can perform many decompositions and with the teacher’s help, they would realize that there are
many ways to solve the problem some more efficient that others based on the context of the
problem. In phase three, the teacher introduces the algorithm because the students now
understand the meaning and purpose of it in their group. Eventually, they find ways to shorten
the process and arrive at the standard algorithm justifying their findings with the stories they
created.
12. Volition
Definition: Volition involves continuing to pursue a goal that is once begun. Volitional
processes are post decisional; pre decisions are motivational. It occurs after a decision is made to
learn or complete an academic task. Volition protects the commitment to learn and focus on the
task from competing distracting activities.
Importance: This is important because there are many distracting activities that can thwart a
student’s attention in class from fellow students to school bell. Volition would help students to
focus and manage their studies. Students should be taught volitional control strategies.
Educational Example: To help students overcome emotional responses when faced with
difficult academic tasks, teach them to instruct themselves to remain calm and focused on task, I
cannot worry about this; I cannot get irrational”. Teach them to self-verbalize encouragements, I
know this material and I will succeed next time by thinking of new strategies”. Changing the
environment can help also if there are distractions or poor lighting. Moreover, teachers can
model strategies for maintaining task persistence or give explicit instructions to students who are
easily distractible to cue them in particular ways when at risk.
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SELF-EFFICACY:
1. Define self-efficacy and describe its dimension.
Self-efficacy is defined as personal judgments of one’s capabilities to organize and execute
courses of action to attain designated goals (Bandura). The level, generality, and strength across
activities and contexts of self-efficacy can be assessed. Level of SE refers to its dependence on
the difficulty of a particular task such as, reading a passage of increasing difficulty; generality
relates to the transferability of self-efficacy beliefs across activities such as from algebra to
statistics; and strength is measured by the amount of one’s certainty about performing a given
task.
SE focuses on performance capabilities rather than on personal qualities. People judge their
capabilities to fulfill given task demands such as solving algebraic equations and not who they
are or how they feel. SE beliefs are not a single disposition but rather are multidimensional in
form and differ on the basis of the domain of functioning for example, efficacy beliefs about
performing on a history test may differ from beliefs about a biology exam. SE beliefs are also
sensitive to variations in performance context such as learning in a noisy place versus the
quietude of a library. Finally, perceptions of efficacy depend on a mastery criterion of
performance rather than on a normative or other criterion e.g. performance. Students would rate
how well they expect to do a puzzle of a particular difficulty level and not how they expect to do
in comparison to other students.
2. Compare and contrast self-efficacy to related constructs.
a. Self-concept is one of the closest constructs to self-efficacy. Self-concept is a general selfdescriptive construct that incorporates many forms of self-knowledge and self-evaluative
feelings. It includes SE in different areas. However, self-efficacy involves organizing and
executing courses of action toward a designated goal. This theory represents a more specific and
situational view of perceived competence in terms of including the behavioral actions or
cognitive skills necessary for competent performance in a given domain. SE would not be selfrecognition of being good in school, but rather an explicit judgment of having the skills for
finding main ideas in passages of varying levels of difficulty, doing subtraction problems
correctly etc. SE is goal oriented whereas self-concept is not goal oriented. For example, a selfconcept measure would be ‘how good are you in English? SE would be ‘how certain are you that
you can solve the algebra problem?’ Math SE was more predictive of problem solving than math
self-concept. When self-efficacy and self-concept are included in regression equations, SE
beliefs display discriminant validity by independently predicting future academic achievement.
b. Another construct that is related to SE is outcome expectations. SE refers to perceptions of
one’s capabilities to produce actions; whereas, outcome expectations involve beliefs about the
anticipated outcomes of those actions. Students may believe that a positive outcome will result
from certain actions but also believe that they lack the competence to produce those actions. For
example, Mary may believe that if she answers the question correctly, the teacher will praise her
(positive outcome expectation). However, she may not attempt to answer the questions if she
doubts her capabilities to answer them (low self-efficacy).
Similarities: students who perform well have confidence in their learning capabilities and expect
(usually receive) positive outcomes for their efforts. However, there is no necessary relation
between SE and OE; students with high SE for learning may expect a low grade as an outcome if
they think the teacher does not like the. Research shows that self-efficacy plays a larger role than
outcome expectancies in motivation.
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3. Discuss the role of self-efficacy in academic motivation.
Self efficacy beliefs have shown convergent validity in influencing choice of activities, level of
effort, persistence, and emotional reactions, which are key academic motivation indices.
According to Bandura, Self-efficacious students participate more readily, work harder, persist
longer and have fewer adverse emotional reactions when they encounter difficulties than those
who doubt their capabilities. In choice of activities, Self efficacious students would undertake
difficult and challenging tasks more readily than inefficacious ones. SE beliefs are predictive of
two measures of students’ effort: rate of performance and expenditure of energy. Schunk and
colleagues found that perceived SE for learning correlates positively with student’s rate of
solving arithmetic problems. In relation to SE and persistence, path analyses show that it
influences students’ skill acquisition both directly and indirectly by increasing their persistence.
Furthermore, students’ self-efficacy to manage academic tasks demands can also influence them
emotionally by decreasing their stress, anxiety, and depression. Researchers found that selfefficacy beliefs are more predictive of math performance than is math anxiety.
4. Discuss the relation of self-efficacy beliefs to self-regulation of learning.
SE beliefs provide students with a sense of agency to motivate their learning through use of selfregulatory processes such as, goal setting, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and strategy use.
Research shows that they more capable students judge themselves, the more challenging goals
they embrace. SE and personal goal setting increased prediction of final course grades in high
school social studies by 31 %. Likewise, when SE and personal goals setting were compared
with verbal subscale of SAT, there was an increase of 35% in predicting students’ final college
grades. These studies demonstrate that SE and goal setting (a self-regulatory behavior) add
significantly in predicting achievement.
The effects of SE beliefs and self-monitoring were studied during concept learning. Efficacious
students were better at monitoring their working time, more persistent, less likely to reject
correct hypothesis prematurely, and better at solving conceptual problems than inefficacious
students of similar abilities.
Self-efficacy beliefs also motivate students’ use of learning strategies. Zimmerman and M. Pons
found that there were developmental increases in perceived verbal and mathematical efficacy as
well as strategy use in 5th, 8th, and 11th grade students. These researchers found that there was a
substantial relation between efficacy beliefs and strategy use across the 3 grade levels of
schooling.
5. Describe institutional and social influences on self-efficacy beliefs.
SE indices focus on cognitive beliefs that are influenced by 4 types of experience:
1. Enactive attainment- Enactive experiences are the most influential source of efficacy belief.
They are predicated on the outcomes of personal experiences. 2. Vicarious experiencehowever, vicarious influences depend on the on an observer’s self-comparison with as well as
outcomes attained by a model. 3. Verbal persuasion has an even more limited impact on
students’ self-efficacy because outcomes are described, not directly witnessed, and thus depend
on the credibility of the persuader. 4. Physiological States: students base their self-efficacy
judgments on their perceived physiological reactions such as fatigue, stress, and other emotions
that are often interpreted as indicators of physical incapability. Self-efficacy is assumed to be
responsive to changes in personal context and outcomes, whether experienced directly,
vicariously, verbally or physiologically. As a result, SE beliefs are studied as indicators of
change during instructional interventions as well as indicators of initial individual differences.
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Research shows that youngsters who observed an adult model the use of a cognitive strategy had
significantly higher levels of perceived efficacy and academic skills than youngsters who had
didactic instruction. Verbally encouraging students to set their own goals improved not only their
efficacy beliefs and achievement but also their commitment to attaining the goals.
Self Regulation
1. Define self-regulation triadically.
A social cognitive perspective defines self regulation as an interaction of personal, behavioral,
and environmental triadic processes. For example, perceived self-efficacy or beliefs about one’s
capabilities to implement actions necessary to learn at a designated levels, is a personal factor.
Research shows that self-efficacy beliefs influence choice of tasks, persistence, effort and skill
acquisition, (person >>>>> behavior). In turn, students’ actions modify their SE. As they work
on tasks, (note their progress, complete assignments) these progress indicators indicate they are
capable of doing well, which increases their SE. (Behavior>>>>person). Research on students
with learning disabilities show that other students may judge them based on disabilities, low SE,
rather than on actual ability, (person>>>environment). Even teachers may hold lower academic
expectations for them. However, if teacher feedback is encouraging, ‘I know you can do this’,
LD students will be more confident (environment>>>>person). Students’ behaviors and
classroom environments influence one another in many ways. When teachers tell students to look
at board, they look without much effort (environment >>>> behavior). If teachers asks questions
and students give wrong answers, teacher may reteach some points (behavior>>>>environment).
Person
Covert SR
Behavioral SR
Environment
Behavior
Environmental SR
Behavioral SR involves self observing and strategically adjusting performance processes such as
one’s method of learning. Environmental SR refers to observing and adjusting environmental
conditions or outcomes. Covert SR involves monitoring and adjusting cognitive and affective
states such as imagery for remembering or relaxing. These triadic feedback loops are open
because they proactively increase performance discrepancies by raising goals and seeking more
challenging tasks unlike closed loops, which limit SR to reduce performance discrepancies
reactively against an unchanging standard. For example, chess players who decide to move up to
a new level of performance make success more difficult, but use the outcome discrepancies as a
way to motivate themselves. SR is cyclical because the feedback from prior performance is used
to make adjustments during current efforts. These adjustments are necessary because personal,
behavioral, and environmental factors are constantly changing during the course of learning and
performance and must be monitored using three self-monitored feedback loops.
2. Describe the cyclical structure of self-regulatory systems.
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From a social cognitive perspective, SR processes fall into 3 cyclical phases: forethought,
performance or volitional control, and self-reflection phase. Forethought refers to influential
processes that precede efforts to act and set the stage for it. Performance or volitional control
involves processes that occur during motoric efforts and affect attention and action. Selfreflection involves processes that occur after performance efforts and influence a person’s
response to that experience. These self-reflections, in turn, influence forethought regarding
subsequent motoric efforts, thus completing the SR cycle.
Performance or
volitional control
Forethought
Selfreflection
3. Describe social and environmental influences on SR.
A key feature of Social cognitive model of SR is the interdependent roles of social,
environmental, and self influences. Environmental and personal (self) processes interact bidirectionally in naturalistic settings. Self-initiated processes alter one’s social and physical
environment, and are in turn affected by those changes such as, when a mom puts a note on the
refrigerator ( an environmental cue) to remind herself or other family members (a social
resource) to buy milk. From a triadic view, people who neglect to use social and physical
environmental resources or see them as an obstacle to personal development will be less
effective in regulating their lives. Even in writing, eminent writers like B. Franklin improved his
writing by imitatively practicing passages written by exemplary writers of his times. People can
increase their self-reactions by using environmental supports such as, self-administered rewards
or praise. There is evidence that people who reward their own attainments accomplish more than
those who perform the same activities without self-administered incentives. Thus the social and
physical environment is viewed by social cognitive researchers as a resource of self-enhancing
forethought, performance or volitional control, and self-reflection. Modeling and instruction
serve as a primary vehicle through which parents, teachers, and communities socially convey
self-regulatory skills such as, persistence, self-praise and adaptive self-reactions to children.
Conversely, when social models demonstrate impulsiveness, self-criticism or defensive selfreactions, a wide array of personal dysfunctions ensue.
4. Discuss dysfunction in self-regulation.
Low self-regulatory skill is associated with a wide range of personal problems. For example,
there is evidence that students who have trouble self-regulating their academic studying achieve
more poorly in school and present more problems for their teachers. Poor regulation of one’s
health through an improper diet, failure to take needed medicines, and exposure to disease also
has had a costly impact on lives. For example, people who cannot self-regulate the chronic
disease of asthma display higher levels of symptoms, lower quality of life, and are hospitalized
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more frequently. Girls who fail to self-regulate their weight often end up binge eating, anorexic
or bulimic. Boys’ misguided regulatory efforts to develop a muscular body often led to the use of
dangerous drugs and questionable forms of exercise. More dysfunctions of SR behaviors lead to
drunk driving, driving too fast, illicit relations, aggression, and other misdemeanors.
Dysfunctions in Self-regulation in Behavioral theory:
(See Learning Theories – Schunk pp. 359- 364)
If a discriminative stimulus failed to produce the behavior, self-regulation would be disrupted.
Self-monitoring refers to deliberate attention to some aspect of one’s behavior and often is
accompanied by recording it’s frequency or intensity. Two important criteria for self-monitoring
are regularity (observing behavior continually instead of intermittently) and proximity (behavior
is observed close in time to its occurrence).
A dysfunction in the process of self-monitoring would occur if non-regular observations were
made or you wait too long to recall or reconstruct the behavior when self-monitoring behavior.
This would disrupt self-monitoring, a key process in self-regulation.
Self-reinforcement may not be enough during the acquisition phase of self-regulatory skills.
Explicit reinforcement from others (teacher) may be important during this phase to reinforce a
gain in self-regulatory skills.
5. Describe the development of self-regulatory skill.
1. SR skill develops through social learning experiences. Researchers have found that parental
processes play an important role in children’s self-regulatory development. Children who are not
taught or modeled SR behaviors lack the self-regulatory skill to manage personal problems and
achieve consistently in school. Children whose parents set clear ‘no nonsense’ standards and
closely monitor their school activity and achievement display not only greater SR, but also
higher levels of social and cognitive development.
2. A second way to develop SR skill is through motivation or the presence of interest. Most
effective SR techniques require anticipation, concentration, effort, and careful self-reflection.
These are used when the skill or its outcomes are highly valued. When skill or its outcomes are
not perceived as valuable, there is no incentive to self-regulate.
3. SR processes can be acquired from and are sustained by social as well as self sources of
influence. Most important task skills are initially acquired by observing, reading or hearing
about the performance of skilled models such as, parents, teachers, coaches, or peers with
expertise. An observational level of skill occurs when learners can induce major features of the
skill or strategy from watching a model learn or perform. Research evidence shows that
persistence of a model during complex problem solving affects the perseverance of observers.
Below are 4 developmental levels of Regulatory skill.
Level Name
Description
Motivation
1.
Observation vicarious induction of skill from versed model vicarious reinforcement
2.
Emulation
imitative performance of model’s skill with
direct social reinforcers
social assistance
3.
Self-control independent of model’s skill, practice
self-reinforcement
4. Self-regulation adaptive use of skill across changing personal self-efficacy beliefs
and environmental conditions
In emulation, the learner emulates the general pattern of the model. The learner’s accuracy can
be improved if the model adopts a teaching role and provides guidance, feedback, and social
reinforcement. In self-control, practice is necessary on one’s own to master the use of a skill in
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the absence of the model. At this level, the learner’s use of a skill depends on representational
standards of the model’s performance. In self-regulated level, task skill is achieved when
learners can systematically adapt their performance to changing personal and contextual
conditions. At this level, the learner can vary the use of task strategies and make adjustments
based on outcomes. The motivation at this level depends on perceptions of self-efficacy.