PSYCH 133F: Learning Styles, Note-Taking, Motivation, and Attributions

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key empirical findings, theoretical concepts, and causal dimensions across educational psychology lectures on learning styles, classroom technology, motivation, praise, memory retrieval, and attribution theory.

Learning Styles Hypothesis

The claim that individualizing instructional methods to match an individual learner's putative style leads to significantly better learning outcomes.

Meshing Hypothesis

The specific version of the learning-styles hypothesis proposing that instructional presentation is most effective when it matches the learner's expressed modality preference, such as verbal presentations for verbal learners and visual presentations for visual learners.

Study Preferences

The documented and reliable tendency of students and adults to express subjective preferences regarding how information is presented to them, though having minimal demonstrated implications for instructional policy or learning outcomes.

Crossover Interaction

The critical experimental interaction pattern required to validate the learning-styles hypothesis, demonstrating that the instructional method that optimizes test performance for learners of one style is different from the method that optimizes performance for learners of a different style.

Zombie Reform

Educational policies and practices that persist and refuse to die despite being repeatedly refuted by empirical scientific evidence and rigorous analysis.

Generative Note-Taking

A note-taking strategy characteristic of longhand writing that involves summarizing, paraphrasing, and conceptually organizing lecture content, fostering deeper cognitive processing and superior conceptual comprehension.

Non-Generative Note-Taking

A passive note-taking approach facilitated by laptop typing that results in mindless verbatim transcription of spoken lecture content, which impairs conceptual test performance.

Laptop Multitasking

Engaging in non-course-related laptop tasks during class, which substantially impairs lecture comprehension, processing depth, and exam performance for both the laptop user and nearby peers within direct view.

External Storage

The hypothesized benefit of note-taking derived from the ability to review and study recorded lecture notes at a later date prior to an assessment.

Generative Learning

A three-part cognitive learning framework outlined by Mayer that requires selecting relevant material from the lesson, organizing that material into a coherent representation, and integrating the representation with existing knowledge.

Retrieval Practice

The active process of recalling information from memory, such as through practice testing or quizzing, which produces durable learning and superior retention compared to passive re-reading or concept mapping.

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

A cognitive principle stating that memory performance is maximized when the cognitive processing demanded during retrieval matches the cognitive processing executed during the initial encoding phase.

Praise for Intelligence

Feedback praising a child's innate ability that leads them to pursue performance goals, attribute setbacks to an uncontrollable lack of ability, and exhibit diminished task persistence, enjoyment, and achievement following failure.

Praise for Effort

Feedback praising a child's process or hard work that leads them to adopt learning goals, attribute setbacks to an unstable lack of effort, and maintain higher persistence, enjoyment, and performance after failure.

Performance Goals

Motivational orientations centered on validating intelligence, documenting high ability, outperforming peers, and obtaining positive judgments of competence.

Learning Goals

Motivational orientations focused on acquiring new strategies, expanding competence, and mastering difficult challenges, even when risking public mistakes.

Self-Enhancement

A motivation characterized by selective attention to positive self-attributes and existing strengths, typically observed in North American participants who persist longer following success than following failure.

Self-Improvement

A motivation characterized by identifying personal shortcomings and seeking to remediate them, typically observed in East Asian and Japanese participants who persist longer following failure than following success.

Incremental Theory

An implicit belief that intelligence and ability are malleable and fluid attributes capable of development through sustained effort and effective strategy use.

Entity Theory

An implicit belief that personal ability and intelligence are fixed, unchangeable traits, causing learners to view remedial effort as unrewarding and ineffective.

Working Memory

A limited-capacity short-term memory system responsible for the temporary regulation, maintenance, and manipulation of information actively relevant to an immediate task.

Rumination

Continuous, repetitive worry that occupies limited working memory resources, leading to performance deficits on cognitively demanding tasks such as math examinations.

Expressive Writing

A quick, self-administered intervention where students write freely about their test-related worries before an exam to reduce intrusive rumination and free up working memory capacity.

Gender Ability Beliefs

Stereotypes regarding gender-based competence in mathematics that serve as the mediating mechanism linking teachers' math anxiety to lower math achievement in young female students.

Balance Theory

A cognitive consistency framework stating that relational balance exists when all three cognitive connections are positive, or when exactly two connections are negative and one is positive.

Reciprocity (Student Evaluations)

A conscious strategy in which students reward an instructor with positive course evaluations in return for lenient grading practices.

Revenge (Student Evaluations)

A conscious strategy in which students punish an instructor with negative course evaluations as retaliation for receiving poor or strict grades.

Processing Fluency

The subjective ease with which information is cognitively processed, which artificially inflates perceived learning, judgments of truth, confidence, and liking.

Fundamental Attribution Theory

The cognitive bias wherein individuals tend to attribute others' actions and outcomes to internal traits while attributing their own actions and outcomes to external situational factors.

Locus (Attribution Theory)

A causal dimension determining whether the perceived cause of an outcome resides inside the individual (internal) or outside in the environment (external).

Stability (Attribution Theory)

A causal dimension determining whether the perceived cause of an event remains consistent over time (stable) or is subject to fluctuation (unstable).

Controllability (Attribution Theory)

A causal dimension determining whether the perceived cause of an event is subject to personal volition (controllable) or lies outside personal influence (uncontrollable).