Master of Science / Department of Psychological Sciences / Michael E. Young / Although risky decision-making tasks present some a priori risk (i.e., base-rate), decision makers often have an opportunity to modify this level of risk through their behaviors. Broadly speaking, risk can be modified by assigning additional resources to an ongoing task or by engaging in specific risk-mitigation strategies before or after the risky decision is made. The modification of risk requires ongoing awareness of task demands, resource constraints, and risk-mitigation strategies that can be used to adapt behavior over time. This thesis explores risk modification that occurs during difficult tasks. Difficult tasks hold greater risks because they fall at the edge of the decision maker’s abilities and are likely to require a greater number of resources to overcome. As resources are engaged they become unavailable for other tasks or strategies to cope with changing task demands. I studied how individuals monitor risks and develop risk mitigation strategies using a videogame task designed to mirror contingencies that would be encountered in the real world. Results from two experiments that involve this task suggest that decision-makers adequately monitor and develop active strategies for dealing with risks. These strategies change over time and vary as a function of task difficulty and experience.

Calibrated Judgments of Learning (CJOL) represent the degree to which students' judgments of learning (JOL) relate to their actual learning. Although a substantial amount of research has been conducted on calibration and JOL in various domains of psychology, only a growing number of studies have begun to address the use of CJOL in applied educational settings. This study investigated the use of CJOL in university developmental math courses. Study participants included 185 men and 100 women with ages ranging from 18 to 61 years (M = 23.48, SD = 5.95). Study results indicate that these developmental math students were fairly accurate in their perceptions of their math performance. When inaccurate, students most commonly under estimated their performance. Students' accuracy was also greatly influenced by the difficulty of math questions on the tests. High performing students were consistently more accurate than lower performing students. Over the course of the study, students received feedback on their accuracy in an attempt to facilitate improved accuracy. Results indicated that students' accuracy decreased with time; likely this was due to the increase in the difficulty of math questions on each test.

This study examined the formative assessment practices of three teachers in English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms using a sociocultural theoretical framework. The study was conducted in a postsecondary ESL setting at a large public university in the southeastern United States. Using an embedded mixed methods design, this study employed teacher interviews and classroom observations to address the overarching question: What individual and contextual factors are present in the formative assessment practices of participant ESL teachers? The study also explored the relationship between student metacognitive judgments of learning (JOL) and performance with the purpose of informing formative assessment practice. To this end, 51 students responded to pre and post surveys on their metacognitive beliefs and judgments of learning questionnaires prior to three unit tests. Summary reports of students’ JOL were provided to teachers for their review and use. Findings showed teachers in this ESL setting engaged in a variety of formative assessment techniques; successful implementation of their techniques were influenced by their instructional style and student attributes like attendance, class participation, and students’ academic or educational experiences. Findings also indicated the central role of assessments in this context that provided ample opportunity for formative assessment. Overall, findings point to the value of using a sociocultural theoretical lens to examine the nature of factors affecting teachers’ formative assessment practice. With regard to the use of metacognitive judgments of learning in formative assessment, findings showed a mixed relationship between student JOL and performance, and there was no change in students’ metacognitive beliefs about writing over the duration of the semester. Although teachers did not use the JOL information in their instruction, they attributed inaccuracies in judgments to students’ achievement level. These findings are limited by implementation issues and sample size. Further study is needed to understand the nature of postsecondary ESL students’ JOL in authentic assessment situations and their applicability in the formative assessment process.