Thesis. 1978. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / Ph.D.

Gaining acceptance and avoiding rejection is arguably one the most fundamental and challenging relational tasks that we face. Given the importance of close relationships, an especially serious threat is rejection, real or imagined, by significant others. Considerable research supports the idea that prolonged exposure to harsh rejection can have deleterious effects on one's physical and emotional wellbeing (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; see Dickerson & Kemeny 2004, for a full review). Research also suggests that early experiences with rejection can result in a bias to anxiously expect and readily perceive rejection in other's behavior - a disposition known to derail interpersonal relationships. This phenomenon is known as Rejection Sensitivity (RS; Feldman & Downey, 1994; Downey & Feldman, 1996). There have been important advances in understanding psychological and physiological responses to interpersonal rejection (e.g., Downey & Feldman, 1996; Downey, Mougios, Ayduk, London, & Shoda, 2004; Dickerson & Kemney, 2004; Romero-Canyas & Downey, 2005; Powers, Pietromonaco, Gunlicks, Sayer, 2006; Richman & Leary, 2009). However, relatively less is known about patterns of attentional processes underlying reactions to rejection cues and events, as well as the extent to which RS impacts learning and memory. These unanswered questions are of critical importance as theory and research suggests that information-processing biases may provide an explanation for the maintenance of RS and disorders like social phobia and anxiety that share many of the characteristics of rejection sensitive individuals (See Bar Haim et al., 2007 for a meta-analytic review). Study 1 uses a well-established attentional control paradigm (Attentional Network Task - ANT; Fan et al., 2002) to assess the relationship between RS and basic attentional mechanisms for alerting, orienting, and executive control. Results from study 1 suggest that RS is not associated with the functioning of attentional networks important for alerting, orienting, and executive control, raising the possibility that RS operates as a distinct system that interacts with attentional networks to influence attention deployment in the presence of social threat cues. This hypothesis is tested in study 2. Study 2 uses a selective attention paradigm that measures eye movements during a visual probe task (e.g., MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986) in order to assess patterns of attention deployment to socially threatening stimuli in RS individuals. Study 2 also tests the attenuating effects of executive control on processing of social threat cues in RS individuals. The latter part of study 2 is designed to address important theoretical and empirical questions about the ability of attentional control to attenuate maladaptive information processing biases in RS individuals. Results suggest that RS is associated with initial vigilance and later avoidance for social threat cues but, as predicted, vigilance for social threat cues is attenuated by high executive control. That is, having good executive control (as measured by self-report and behavioral measures - the ANT) can help to reduce the extent to which social threat cues capture and hold the attention of RS individuals. Study 3 was designed to answer the question of how the tendency of RS individuals to detect and react to social threat cues can affect more overt forms of learning and memory (i.e., declarative memories). In order to address this question, study 3 used an incidental-learning paradigm where participants answered general knowledge questions (What is the capital of Delaware?) followed by immediate performance accuracy (correct vs. incorrect) and the correct answer (Dover). Initially incorrect items were retested 24 to 48 hours later to determine if the correct answer had been successfully encoded. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were used to measure neural responses to performance feedback (correct vs. incorrect at first test) and learning feedback (the correct answer) to assess whether (1) RS is associated with greater sensitivity to performance feedback in general or specifically for social performance feedback, (2) whether these reactions mediate successful learning (i.e., retrieval of corrective feedback), and (3) whether there are gender differences in how RS operates in an evaluative context, which would provide an explanation, based on neural mechanisms, to previously found differences in which RS females seem to be more vulnerable to reduced achievement in competitive academic settings (London et al., 2013). Overall, behavioral results suggest that individuals were able to encode and retrieve corrective information after receiving social (face) performance feedback at the same rate as they were after receiving non-social (symbol) performance feedback, suggesting that contextualizing performance feedback within the social domain did not generally enhance or impair learning and memory. However, within females, higher RS scores were associated with poorer retrieval in the social performance feedback condition suggesting that RS moderates the effect of social performance feedback on retrieval in females but not in males. To better understand the mechanisms underlying these behavioral effects we examined the following ERP waveforms associated with processing of social and non-social performance feedback: the frontally-maximal feedback related negativity (FRN), the frontally-maximal orienting effect (P3a), and a centrally-maximal late positive potential (LPP). Respectively, these components have been shown to reflect more automatic processing of feedback valence, orienting responses to rare events, and sustained attention to motivationally relevant information. Finally, ERP waveforms associated with processing of the corrective feedback were also analyzed. Consistent with previous research, the FRN was enhanced in response to performance feedback indicating that an incorrect response had been made while the P3a and LPP were enhanced in response to performance feedback indicating that a correct response, a rarer outcome in this challenging task, had been made. There were no gender differences in the overall amplitude of the FRN, P3a or LPP. However, within females, RS was associated with a smaller FRN amplitude in the social performance feedback condition. Analyses were also conducted on the relationship between these ERPs, encoding of the corrective feedback (i.e., seeing the correct answer on the screen), and subsequent memory (i.e., correctly answering the question at retest). Although the P3a and the LPP were not associated with encoding of the corrective feedback or subsequent memory, the FRN positively predicted greater processing of the corrective feedback and subsequent memory in the social feedback condition. However, within females, the FRN negatively predicted encoding of the corrective feedback and subsequent memory only in the social condition. Finally, a mediation analysis was used to further understand the process by which neural responses to the performance feedback might affect processing of the corrective feedback and subsequent memory overall and perhaps differently for RS females and males. Results suggest that social performance feedback reduces retrieval success in RS females by reducing the level of engagement with corrective feedback, ultimately resulting in poorer encoding into long-term memory. This knowledge could help expand our understanding of how rejection cues may disrupt, by triggering maladaptive strategies, the attention deployment of individuals who are especially sensitive to social threat whether for personal reasons (e.g., a history of experience with harsh rejection from caregivers) or because of membership in a marginalized social group (e.g., women in law or STEM fields). In doing so, this research could identify important avenues for interventions that work to enhance interpersonal functioning in RS individuals by training them to use self regulatory strategies that reduce attentional biases and augment information processing (i.e., learning and memory).

In Experiment I, I tested for the demonstration of Naming after presentation of Naming experiences that included an additional sensory experience (i.e., auditory non-speech stimulus) not presented during previous Naming studies. Probes were then conducted to test for the 4 dependent variables: 1) presence of listener half of Naming to visual stimuli, 2) the presence of the speaker half of Naming to visual stimuli, 3) the presence of the listener half of Naming to auditory non-speech stimuli, and 4) the presence of the speaker half of Naming to auditory non-speech stimuli. Following the first round of probes, all 6 participants demonstrated the listener half of Naming for visual stimuli, indicating that visual stimuli functioned as conditioned reinforcement for observing. In addition, following 3-4 probe sessions with the same set of stimuli, all participants emitted criterion-level responses for each of the four dependent variables. In Experiment II, using a multiple probe design across participants with participants who demonstrated conditioned reinforcement for observing visual stimuli, I tested whether repeated probes with sets of stimuli as an intervention would function to establish conditioned reinforcement for spoken and non-spoken auditory stimuli. In addition, I conducted two sets of probes during each pre and post- intervention probe session, one using a non-contrived stimuli set and another using a contrived stimuli set, to test whether there is a difference in the demonstration of Naming when assessed with non-contrived versus contrived stimuli. Results indicated overall increases in correct untaught listener and speaker responses during post-intervention probe sessions to novel sets of both contrived and non-contrived visual and auditory non-speech stimuli across all participants. In Experiment III, using a multiple probe design across participants, I tested the effects of the repeated probe procedure on the emergence of Naming for contrived visual and auditory stimuli, with 6 participants who demonstrated full Naming with non-contrived stimuli. During pre-intervention probes, all 6 participants demonstrated the listener half of Naming for contrived visual stimuli, but did not demonstrate the listener half of Naming for contrived auditory stimuli nor the speaker half of Naming for both contrived visual and auditory stimuli. Intervention was conducted in the same way as in Experiment II, but with only contrived stimuli sets. During post-intervention probes, all participants demonstrated criterion-level or close to criterion-level responding for untaught listener and speaker responses with a novel set of contrived visual and auditory stimuli. Results of the three studies combined suggested that simply having the listener component of Naming for visual stimuli and repeated exposures to visual and auditory stimuli may establish stimulus control for spoken and non-spoken contrived auditory stimuli. These increases in stimulus control are educationally significant, as they allow individuals to contact new stimuli in the environment, allowing for possibilities of learning multiple responses as well as multiple features of stimuli. Results also suggested that the demonstration of Naming with contrived stimuli may be a type of Naming cusp that is not necessarily present in individuals who demonstrate Naming with non-contrived stimuli. Educational implications of these findings, limitations, and future research are then discussed.

Object use is a ubiquitous characteristic of the human species, and learning how objects function is a fundamental part of human development. This research examines the role that intentionality plays in children's understanding of causal relationships during imitation learning of object use. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, 2- to 5-year-olds observed demonstrations in which causally irrelevant and causally relevant actions were performed to achieve a desired goal of retrieving toys from within containers. Irrelevant actions were performed either intentionally ("There!") or accidentally ("Whoops! I didn't mean to do that!"). Study 1 found that 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, but not 2-year-olds, were less likely to imitate causally irrelevant actions performed accidentally than those performed intentionally. This suggests that older children used intentionality to guide causal inference, perceiving intentional actions as causally effective and accidental actions as causally ineffective. Study 2 foun d that the intentionality of the demonstrator's actions had an enduring effect - after watching a single demonstration, children persisted in performing intentional irrelevant actions and continued to ignore accidental irrelevant actions when given three successive opportunities to complete the task. Study 3 examined how lack of knowledge about the task goal prior to the demonstrations affected imitation and found that children without explicit verbal instruction of the toy-retrieval goal imitated irrelevant actions to a greater degree than children from Study 1, who were informed of the goal throughout the experiment. Study 4 progressed beyond irrelevant actions to investigate the effect of intentionality on 3- to 5-year-olds' imitation of relevant actions. / Inconsistency was created between the intentionality with which relevant actions were demonstrated and the causal necessity of these actions for the child's turn. Relevancy emerged as the paramount factor in study 4 - regardless of the intentionality with which relevant actions were demonstrated, children imitated these actions if they remained relevant and largely ignored them if they were rendered irrelevant. Findings are placed within a pedagogical framework and discussed from an evolutionary perspective in relation to the cultural transmission of tool-use knowledge. / by Amy K. Gardiner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This study tested the hypotheses that phonological memory contributes to vocabulary and grammatical development in young Spanish-English bilinguals, and that the relation between phonological memory and both vocabulary and grammar is language-specific. Phonological memory skill was the percentage of consonants correctly repeated (PCC) in English, and Spanish Nonword Repetition (NWR) tasks at 22 months. Vocabulary size and grammatical complexity were measured at 25 months using the English and Spanish versions for the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Nonword repetition accuracy was significantly related to both subsequent vocabulary size and grammatical complexity within and across languages after controlling for the percentage of input in English. The relations were not significantly higher within than between languages. The results suggest that in these young Spanish-English simultaneous bilinguals phonological memory is a language-general ability that contributes to the development of vocabulary and grammar in both English and Spanish. / by Marisol Parra. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained great popularity during a relatively short time frame. Yet, measuring MOOC learner success has been fairly challenging. The development of technology and scale of online education considerably outpace efforts to evaluate and understand how well it is succeeding at improving outcomes. As a response and after reviewing current literature and relevant theories, in this dissertation, three research directions have been identified, as critical steps toward better understanding MOOC success: 1.How does a learner’s motivation influence their outcomes? 2. How does a learner’s motivation influence their performance and engagement within a MOOC? 3. How does a learner’s performance and engagement within the course influence their outcomes? Given these three research questions, three studies have been conducted to analyze both MOOC learner motivation and learning activities via taking into account learner data before, during, and after taking a MOOC. This research considers success at two stages: during the course itself (course completion), and the student’s post-course career development. The results of Study 1 showed that course completers tend to be more interested in the course content, whereas non-completers tend to be more interested in MOOCs as a type of learning experience. Learners who complete the course tend to have more self-efficacy for their ability to complete the course, from the beginning. Grit and goal orientation are associated with course completion, with grit predicting course completion independently from intention to complete, and with comparable strength. Study 2 investigated 5 behavioral thresholds in addition to just looking at course completion alone and looked into how each of the 5 types may link to the different motivational aspects included in the pre-course survey. The results indicated that emerging patterns unique to the MOOC environment could be related to various learning needs that require engagement with the course materials on varied levels. For example, skipping introductory videos might relate to learners intention of focusing on a sub-set of the course materials. Results of Study 3 showed that career advancers earn better scores and are more likely to complete the course. Career advancers also engaged more frequently with all key course components such as course pages, lecture videos, assignment submissions, and discussion forums. However, when further examining interaction behaviors within discussion forums, advancers tend to be forum lurkers who frequently read the forums but were less likely to post, comment, or vote. The results of these studies can increase our understanding of MOOC learner success and help inform a framework that evaluates a MOOC learner’s success in a comprehensive way.

For failure experiences to be productive for future performance or learning, students must be both willing to persist in the face of failure, and effective in gleaning information from their errors. While there have been extensive advances in understanding the motivational dispositions that drive resilience and persistence in the face of failure, less has been done to investigate what strategies and learning behaviors students can undertake to make those failure experiences productive. This dissertation investigates what kinds of behaviors expert learners (in the form of graduate students) employ when encountering failure that predict future performance (Study 1), and whether such effective behaviors can be provoked in less sophisticated learners (in the form of high school students) that would subsequently lead to deeper learning (Study 2). Study 1 showed that experiencing and responding to failures in an educational electrical circuit puzzle game prior to formal instruction led to deeper learning, and that one particular strategy, “information-seeking and fixing”, was predictive of higher performance. This strategy was decomposed into three metacognitive components: error specification, where the subject made the realization that a knowledge gap or misunderstanding led to the failure; knowledge gap resolution, where the subject sought information to resolve the knowledge gap; and application, where subjects took their newly acquired information to fix their prior error. In Study 2, two types of prompts were added to the educational game: one that provoked students through these metacognitive steps of error specification, information seeking, and fixing, labelled the “Metacognitive Failure Response” (MFR) condition; and a second prompt that provoked students to make a global judgment of knowing, labelled the “Global Awareness” (GA) condition. The results indicated that although there were no significant condition differences between the three groups (MFR, GA, and control condition where participants received no prompt at all), more time spent on the MFR prompt predicted deeper and more robust learning. In contrast, more time spent on the “Global Awareness” prompt did not predict deeper learning, suggesting that individual factors (such as conscientiousness) did not alone account for the benefits of time spent on the MFR prompt on learning. These results suggest that while MFR participants who carefully attended to the metacognitive prompts to specify the source of their errors and seek information experienced learning benefits, not all MFR participants sufficiently attended to the prompts enough to experience learning gains. Altogether, this body of research suggests that using this “error specification, info-seeking, fixing” strategy can be effective for making failure productive, but other instructional techniques beyond system-delivered prompts must be employed for full adoption of this metacognitive response to failure. Implications for teaching students to respond effectively to failure, for games in the classroom, and for design and engineering processes are discussed.

培養終身學習者是學校教育的重要任務，轉變評估理念、將評估作為促學手段是教育政策的導向，將二者有機結合到課堂中，即利用課堂評估培養學生成為終身學習者的實踐訴求是研究源起。本研究依託自主學習概念界定終身學習者所需素養，調查中國大陸三所中學的課堂評估實踐可否培養自主學習者以及影響因素。研究由四個問題引導展開：促進自主學習的課堂評估特徵在中國中學體現如何？中國中學生自主學習狀況如何？各項課堂評估特徵對學生自主學習各維度的影響關係為何？不同課堂評估特徵對自主學習有不同影響的原因為何？本研究選取河北省與廣州市三所中學12個高二班級，通過問卷、訪談、（課堂與實物）觀察收集數據，研究課堂評估及學生自主學習狀況。共計有分屬生物、語文、英語三門學科的630名學生與12位教師參與。採用描述統計、多元方差分析、結構方程建模等量化統計方法並結合質化分析，研究結果如下： / 第一，參與研究中學課堂評估實踐在促進自主學習的特徵上處於中等水平，學科比較發現英語科水平最低。評估採用傳統任務形式，明顯模仿高考試題，包含不同題型，考查多種認知能力。學生自評以評分與評後反思跟進為主，互評僅為評分且互評機會少，學生無參與評估決策機會。教師對學生參與評估的指導主要在於精確評分，將評估視為管理工具，故剝奪學生參與決策機會。課堂口頭反饋是主要教師反饋渠道，反饋側重認知內容。課堂評估氛圍安全，阻礙學生積極應對課堂評估的主要是自尊。 / 第二，學生自主學習水平也在中等，英語科水平最低。學生的元認知調節針對學習內容、不關注認知策略，較多做評估後反思與調整，但缺乏計劃與監視，著重"回顧"。認知策略上多用記憶法，精細加工策略居中，組織策略最少。學生內部動機較高，認為學習內容有價值；外部動機主要有高考與重要他人的期待，相對不重視社會比較或在同伴中地位。對動機調節策略的運用無意識，當有意識調節動機時，往往採用回避或控制，而非真正調節動機。 / 第三，文獻指出七項評估特徵──評估任務、自評、互評、學生參與評估決策、教師指導與結構、教師反饋、評估氛圍──存在發展自主學習的契機，但本研究僅提供部分支持。其中可促進自主學習的包括自評、教師指導與結構以及教師反饋，評估任務及學生參與評估決策效用有限，利用互評、營造安全評估氛圍兩項策略未提升自主學習水平。 / 第四，九類因素影響課堂評估對自主學習的效用。除評估本身的質與量方面因素外，存在七類"情境"因素：學生執行、學生對待反饋、學生積極主動參與、學生依賴、學習動機與策略不易變、學科特征、師生關係。 / The New Curriculum Reform along with a series of official educational documents spells out the imperative for schools to foster lifelong learners; a formative assessment initiative also stands out in the reform. The present research explores the potential of integrating the two themes into regular classroom practice, i.e., formatively use classroom assessment (CA) to prepare students for lifelong learning. Four research questions guide this pursuit: How pro-SRL (Self-regulated learning) are Chinese high-school classroom assessment (HCA) practices in reference to seven assessment features? How well do Chinese high-school students regulate their learning? What is the impact of CA on students’ SRL? Why do CA strategies have varied impacts? / 630 high-school juniors and their 12 teachers, from 3 high schools in Hebei and Guangzhou, participated in the study. Questionnaire survey, interview, class observation and artifact collection were adopted to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The participants were chosen so as to represent various CA practices in different subject areas including biology, Chinese and EFL (English). / Quantitative analytical techniques including descriptive analysis, MANOVA, and SEM were employed in association with qualitative analysis to find: / Firstly, HCA moderately bore pro-SRL features, though there were variations among the three subjects, with EFL the lowest. Specifically, HCA mainly relied on traditional assessment tasks that were obviously modeled on Gaokao papers; these tasks tapped a range of cognitive abilities. Self-assessment and peer-assessment focused on rating and not much else. Students profited from self-rating through reflection and reaction, but peer-rating was minimally engaging. Meanwhile peer-assessment was rare. Teacher instruction on assessment techniques, if any, was primarily concerning rating accuracy. In addition to the lack of real self- or peer-assessment practice, students were not involved in making decisions regarding their own assessment. This is because teachers saw assessment as a way to control and manage. Teacher feedback was usually delivered orally during class, mostly focused on the specific assessment tasks. Classroom assessment was not much of a high-stakes event but viewed by the students as an occasion where they needed protect their self-esteem. / Secondly, students were medium-level self-regulated learners, and once again EFL students trailed others. When they metacognitively regulated their learning, the students took a retrospective approach, i.e., they reflected and reacted, but seldom planned and monitored. Also, they focused on what they learned, not how they learned what they learned. Memorization was the most common cognitive strategy, followed by elaboration, and organization. Students showed high intrinsic motivation; they deemed curricular materials relevant and important. Their extrinsic motivation was Gaokao-related, as well as fueled by their significant others’ expectations. Less high was the motivation to earn admiration from peers. Students were not knowledgeable about motivation-regulating strategies. As a result, they used volitional and avoidance approaches when learning motivation was low, though some of their learning activities had unintended effect of boosting motivation. / Thirdly, the seven CA features, i.e., assessment task, self-assessment, peer-assessment, student involvement in decision-making, teacher instruction and structure, teacher feedback as well as assessment environment, did not contribute to SRL equally. Among the seven, self-assessment most effectively supported SRL, followed by teacher instruction and provision of structure on assessment procedures, and then teacher feedback. Assessment task and student involvement in decision-making had mixed impacts. Peer-assessment and assessment environment did not improve SRL. / Fourthly, to make any conclusions practical, factors that interfered with the impact of assessment strategies were explored. Among the 9 factors, 2 were traits inherent in the strategies, i.e., the relevance of the strategies, including the implementation of them, to the concerned SRL dimension, and the frequency and consistency of their use. The remaining 7 were contextual, including student implementation, student response to feedback, student engagement, student reliance, fixed learning motivation and strategy use, the subject per se, and student-teacher relationship. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 張文霄. / Parallel title from added title page. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-284). / Abstracts also in English. / Zhang Wenxiao.

Abstract not available

This thesis is a report of a participatory inquiry process looking at enhancing the learning process in a technical academic field in high education by utilising tools and techniques which go beyond the rational/logical, intellectual domain in a functional, objective world. By empathising with, nurturing and sustaining the whole person, and taking account of past patterning as well as future visions including technological advances to augment human awareness, the scene is set for depth learning. Depth learning in a tertiary environment can only happen as a result of the dynamic that exists between the dominant, logical/rational, intellectual paradigm and the experiential extension of the boundaries surrounding this domain. Any experiences which suppress the full, holistic expression of our being alienate us from the fullness of the expression and hence from depth learning. Depth learning is indicated by intrinsic motivation, which is more likely to occur in a trusting and supporting environment. The research took place within a systemic intellectual framework, where emergence is the prime characteristic used to evaluate results. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)