Purpose: Recent studies on the resumption of an interrupted task (8)(9)(10) conclude that the important factors which determine the resumption are subject's expectation as to whether he can succeed in that task or not, and the substitute value of the interpolated task.The purpose of this study is to test how these factors, success-expectation and substitute value work under different situational conditions.Subjects: Middle school girlsProcedures: Materials are several formboards constituting some simple geometrical figures (cf. figure. 1)Following two different situations are set up by instructions and the instructor's atmosphere.The two different situations are:A...free play situationB...test situationIn each situation, subject's free choice of task is examined after the following conditions:a. after successful experienceb. after failure experiencec. after interruption with expectation of suecessd. after interruption with expectatien of failuree. after being given similar and difficult interpolated taskf. after being given the different and uninteresting task (Kraepelin Test) as the interpolated taskg. After being given interesting puzzles as the interpolatad task.Results: Under the condition a, in the free play situation most subjects select the task which is different from the original task while in the test situation subjects tend to select the same or the similar task as the original successful one. Under condition b, in both situations A and B, subjects select the task which they failed at first.Condition c and d, in free play situation subjects tend to resume the original interuppted task, but in the test situation there is little tendency to resume.Under condition e, subjects resume the interrupted taskUnder condition f, subjects resume the interrupted task.Under condition g, there is scarcely any tendency to resume the interrupted task.Conclusion from these results, we see the factor of success and failure is effective only in the test situation. In the free play situation, subject's selection of task is not significantly influenced by the factor of success-failure. And from the results of e, f, g, we see there are some instances in which subject's resuming behavior seems to be independent of the substitute value of the interpolated task. For example, subjects often resume interrupted task after finishing interpolated task which i s supposed to have high substitute value while they do not resume even after be ng given the task which is supposed to have low substitute value but having different new kind of attractiveness in itself.The author conclude that the quality? and amount of the situational stress is the most importunt factor determining subject's selection of the task. We must first examine the dynamic character of the experimental situation. Without such examination, any formalization on the resumption of an interrupted task may be onesided.
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