Children's Locus Research Articles

The Relation of Anglo- and Mexican-American Children's Locus of Control Beliefs to Parents' and Teachers' Socialization Practices

The Relation of Anglo- and Mexican-American Children's Locus of Control Beliefs to Parents' and Teachers' Socialization Practices

Factor structure of children's locus of control beliefs: A cross-cultural approach

Factor structure of children's locus of control beliefs: A cross-cultural approach

Parents' Preferred Communication Style and Locus of Control of Preschool Children

The purpose was to examine within family similarity and across situational consistency in parental models of optimal communication, and to examine parental preferred communi cation strategy in relation to locus of control of young children. Data were collected on 25 middle‐class couples and their preschool‐aged child. Parental communication preference in teaching and child management situations was assesed by a specially devised interview questionnaire technique, and children's locus of control was measured by the Stanford Pre school Internal‐External Scale. Results indicated that mothers' preference for nondirective socratic communication in child management but not teaching situations was related to internal locus of control in children. The importance of considering situational variation in the study of parent‐child relations and locus of control was indicated.

Perceived Parental Acceptance-Rejection and the Development of Children's Locus of Control

In a study of relationships between locus of control and perceived parental acceptance-rejection as they vary by age, 271 boys and girls from 9 through 11 years of age were administered the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale, short form, and the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire. A multiple regression/correlation analysis revealed that internality increased significantly with children's age and with children's perceptions of increased parental acceptance. Moreover, age and parenting jointly accounted for 22% of the variance in children's locus of control scores.

Application of Biofeedback to Treatment of Children

Abstract Self-control over brain rhythms such as the sensorimotor rhythm and use of EEG feedback for altering hemispheric-specific activity are potentially applicable techniques for hyperactive, epileptic, and learning-disabled children. Other somatic control systems such as temperature regulation and electromyographic response have shown promise for regulation of stress responses, anxiety, and specific symptoms related to disturbances of autonomic or skeletal muscle systems in adults. It is proposed that in addition to their specific training effects, such methods may have potent side effects by altering the child's internal locus of control, thus affecting adjustment in a wide variety of stressful situations and correcting faulty learning histories.

Some Characteristics of Absentee Students in Grade 4

Identifying and predicting those students who will be most affected by absenteeism from school remains a serious and complex problem. The importance of studying this problem has been stressed by researchers (Tyrer & Tyrer, 1974) who found childhood absenteeism to be related to adult indices of mental health. The present study investigated the correlations between absenteeism and che psychological and behavioral measures of children's locus of control, anxiety, intelligence, achievement, and behavioral adjustment. Parental absence or presence and their locus of control were also examined. Subjects were 177 fourthgrade students (82 girls and 95 boys) from the lower socioeconomic schools of a midwestern city. Forty-three were from single-parent families (all mothers), while 134 students had both parents present in the family.

Social Desirability Response Bias in Children's Locus of Control Reports

As part of a comprehensive evaluation of an in-school parenting education curriculum, 281 junior high school students in a major urban school district completed both the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children and the Crandall, Crandall, and Katkovsky Children's Social Desirability Questionnaire. Potential differences in influence of social-desirability response bias on the locus scores of students of differing race and sex were explored via zero-order correlations and bivariate regression. Although mean scores of black respondents were significantly higher than those of their white counterparts on measures of social-desirability response bias and external locus of control, Children's Social Desirability scores never accounted for more than 1% of the variance in the locus of control scores of any subgroup.

Modification of Elementary Students' Locus of Control: An Operant Approach

Summary This study investigated the use of operant techniques to modify childrens' locus of control. The Ss were 125, black fourth and fifth grade boys and girls. All Ss responded to the Children's Locus of Control scale both before and after a 16 day treatment period. Children in the experimental group received positive reinforcement contingent upon on-task behavior. It was hypothesized that this treatment would underscore for students the contingent nature of the relationship between their own personal behavior and the manner in which the environment responded to them and thus lead to a more internal locus of control. To control for possible Hawthorne effects, students in a placebo group were noncontingently given reinforcements of a highly similar nature. Children in a control group received no treatment per se. Analyses of the locus of control data indicate that despite pretreatment equivalence, experimental Ss were found to be significantly more internal than their counterparts in either the placebo or control groups at the conclusion of the treatment period.

Children's concepts of healing: Cognitive development and locus of control factors.

This study of young children's understanding of the process of healing indicates that both level of cognitive development and locus of control are relevant factors. The importance of the children's locus of control orienation to their understanding was found to depend upon the interaction of the cognitive level and the complexity of the concept considered.

Toward a Framework for Developing Children's Locus-of-Control Orientation: Implications from the Kibbutz System

LIFSHITZ, MICHAELA, and RAMOT, LOTEH. Toward a Framework for Developing Children's Locus-of-Control Orientation: Implications from the Kibbutz System. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 85-95. The study explored the extent to which the development of children's locus of control (LC) is affected by differing levels of antecedent parental contact in combination with differing educational ideologies and practices. The sample consisted of 330 children (ages 14 and 17) and their parents from the 3 major kibbutz movements. Results indicated that by the time early adolescence is reached, LC has stabilized. Subjects, especially girls, raised in kibbutzim characterized by a greater degree of authoritarian educational methods combined with intimate early contacts with parents (familial sleeping arrangement) were found to be less internal than those who had been raised under an ideology espousing more peer-group autonomy and lesser contacts with parents (communal sleeping arrangement). In addition, parents' LC had a greater effect on the LC of the communal-sleeping-arrangement subjects in a cross-sex complementary manner. It is suggested that parents in a communal sleeping arrangement hold a higher reward value for their children and thus are more influential in the development of their children's LC than are parents in a familial sleeping arrangement.

The Effect of Locus of Control and Locus of Reinforcement on Academic Task Persistence

Summary It was proposed that a child's locus of control may help to determine when self-reinforcement or external reinforcement is superior in motivating academic task performance. One hundred fifty-three fourth and fifth grade boys selected on the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire (IAR) as having either an internal or external locus of control in academic tasks were assigned to self-reinforcement or external reinforcement conditions. External reinforcement led to greater task output than selfreinforcement. However, when locus of control was defined by use of both IAR subscales rather than by the total score, externals performed best under conditions of external reinforcement, as predicted, while internals performed equally well under both conditions.

Variations in a construct: Quantitative and qualitative differences in children's locus of control.

Variations in a construct: Quantitative and qualitative differences in children's locus of control.

Locus of control as a mediator of adaptive behaviour in children and adolescents.

Summarizes and evaluates the literature on locus of control and adaptive behavior in children and adolescents. Included are descriptions of the various measures of locus of control for younger samples (e.g., Children's Picture Test of Internal-External Control, Children's Locus of Control Scale, Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire), their reliability and validity, and their association to race, socioeconomic status, and age. Although the majority of the research is correlational in nature, there appears to be substantial support for the notion that children and adolescents who hold internal beliefs function in a more positive, efficacious, and adaptive manner in both achievement and nonachievement situations than their external counterparts. Research on the antecedents and modification of locus of control beliefs suggests that awareness of behavior-reinforcement contingencies is the critical factor in the development or change of such beliefs. It is suggested that future research provide appropriate controls for the possible confounding influence of verbal ability and socioeconomic status and also consider the contribution of other social learning theory variables in examining locus of control relationships. (French abstract) (4 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

Task Persistence and Locus of Control in Elementary School Children

GORDON, DONALD A.; JONES, RICHARD H.; and SHORT, NANCY L. Task Persistence and Locus of Control in Elementary School Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 1716-1719. Task persistence was considered an academic behavior related to a child's generalized expectancy of causal attribution. The relationship frequently found between a child's locus of control orientation and his or her academic achievement was believed to be due, at least in part, to the influence of locus of control on task persistence. To assess this possibility, the Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Locus of Control Scale was administered to 147 thirdand sixth-grade boys and girls. Of this sample, 96 children were given an anagram task with instructions that performance was due either to skill or chance. The effects of locus of control on persistence time differed for third and sixth graders and for boys and girls. Thus, sex and age of the child were shown to be moderator variables in the task persistence-locus of control relationship. Skill and chance instructions had no effect upon persistence time. The results suggest that generalized expectancies associated with locus of control are related to persistence, whereas specific expectancies induced by skill or chance instructions are not.

The Relation between Locus of Control and the Development of Moral Judgment

The Relation between Locus of Control and the Development of Moral Judgment

Achievement Motivation and the Locus of Control of Children with Learning Disabilities and Behavior Disorders

The Children's Locus of Control Scale was administered to 48 children with learning and behavior problems and 48 normal children. No significant difference in performance was found. The experimental group, divided randomly into three groups, was given Digit Symbol, Coding, and NIM Test under three different motivational conditions. The data analysis revealed the following: (1) On the Coding Test, the performance of the group with higher scores on the CLCS was significantly better than that of the group with lower scores (p <.01). (2) On the Digit Symbol Test, an interaction effect between the level of locus of control and success-failure experience was found (p <.05). Implications of the findings and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Relationship between Transgression and Locus of Control in Military Dependent Children

It was hypothesized that externally controlled children (as defined operationally by scores on the Bialer-Cromwell Children's Locus of Control Scale) would exhibit a higher frequency of transgression than internally controlled children. Ss were a random selection of 60 fourth and fifth grade boys and 60 first and second grade boys randomly assigned to one of three groups: (a) punishment at initiation, (b) punishment at completion, (c) control. As the child reached for the attractive member of a pair of toys, he was verbally admonished (punishment). Having been conditioned with punishment for nine trials, the child was left alone on Trial 10, to determine if he would transgress (move the preferred toy). The hypothesis was not confirmed. Children who transgressed were significantly higher in internality than those who did not. Analysis of variance showed no statistically significant differences. Data was examined in terms of the military situation, individual differences, and item analysis of the locus of control scale.

LOCUS OF CONTROL: AN EXAMPLE OF DANGERS IN USING CHILDREN'S SCALES WITH CHILDREN

GORSUCH, RICHARD L.; HENIGHAN, RICHARD P.; and BARNARD, CAROLINE. Locus of Control: An Example of Dangers in Using Children's Scales with Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 579-590. Estimates of the reliability of children's locus of control scales were generally nonexistent for low-verbal-ability children, while estimates of the reliability of such scales used on high-verbal-ability fourth and fifth graders were as high as .6. Scales whose reliability changes across subgroups will produce misleading results whenever (1) the mean of the children who respond reliably is different from the mean resulting from random responding, or (2) the variable identifying the subgroups interacts with the construct being measured by the scale. Since the mean of the locus of control for high-verbal children differed from the mean for random responding, the correlation observed between locus of control and correlates of ability will probably be spurious.

Control of Reinforcement and Academic Achievement

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between children's locus of control scores and school achievement, as measured by reading scores, for low and upper-middle socioeconomic level (SEL) white and black groups. It was found that the low SEL group had significantly higher external scores than the upper-middle SEL group and that within the upper-middle group the blacks had higher external scores than the whites. However, within the low group, there was no relationship between race and external scores. Of the four groups, white low SEL, black low SEL, black upper-middle SEL, and white upper-middle SEL, the locus of control scores related to success in reading in only the latter group. It was found that the higher the external score, the lower the reading score. The findings are discussed in terms of their educational implications.

The Achievement of Boys and Girls Taught by Men and Women Teachers

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Achievement of Boys and Girls Taught by Men and Women TeachersRichard D. ArnoldRichard D. Arnold Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 68, Number 7Apr., 1968 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/460460 Views: 7Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Ingemar Emanuelsson, Siv Fischbein Vive la Difference? A Study on Sex and Schooling, Western European Education 19, no.33 (Dec 2014): 31–49.https://doi.org/10.2753/EUE1056-4934190331Dolores Gold, Myrna Reis Male teacher effects on young children: A theoretical and empirical consideration, Sex Roles 8, no.55 (May 1982): 493–513.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287715Raymond Buriel Mexican- and Anglo American Children's Locus of Control and Achievement in Relation to Teachers' Attitudes, The Journal of Genetic Psychology 140, no.11 (Mar 1982): 131–143.https://doi.org/10.1080/00221325.1982.10534181 Karen Vroegh Sex of Teacher and Academic Achievement: A Review of Research, The Elementary School Journal 76, no.77 (Oct 2015): 389–405.https://doi.org/10.1086/461002David E. Neumeister Differences between 4th Grade Instructors on Intelligence of Boys and Girls, Psychological Reports 26, no.11 (Sep 2016): 309–310.https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1970.26.1.309