Schoolbook Texts: Behavioral Achievement Priming in Math and Language.

Stefan Engeser,Ingrid Baum,Nicola Baumann

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150497

Abstract

Prior research found reliable and considerably strong effects of semantic achievement primes on subsequent performance. In order to simulate a more natural priming condition to better understand the practical relevance of semantic achievement priming effects, running texts of schoolbook excerpts with and without achievement primes were used as priming stimuli. Additionally, we manipulated the achievement context; some subjects received no feedback about their achievement and others received feedback according to a social or individual reference norm. As expected, we found a reliable (albeit small) positive behavioral priming effect of semantic achievement primes on achievement in math (Experiment 1) and language tasks (Experiment 2). Feedback moderated the behavioral priming effect less consistently than we expected. The implication that achievement primes in schoolbooks can foster performance is discussed along with general theoretical implications.

Highlights

IntroductionSemantic priming studies demonstrate the influence of textual stimuli on behavior for various domains
Behavioral priming effectsSemantic priming studies demonstrate the influence of textual stimuli on behavior for various domains
Completed tasks were followed by no feedback, feedback regarding their performance compared to others, or feedback regarding their performance compared to their performance in the task before

Summary

Introduction

Semantic priming studies demonstrate the influence of textual stimuli on behavior for various domains. Of special interest for our work, reading words related to the achievement domain like “win,” “master,” or “achieve” led to higher performance. This has been shown by Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, and Trötschel [4] and replicated by others (e.g, [5,6,7,8]). One could regard books (and others) as a source of daily semantic stimuli For books this would imply that books containing more achievement primes foster performance, and this should cumulate to higher academic performance when this occurs over a longer time period.

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion