Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The effects of feedback often depend on individual learnercharacteristics. In the current study, we experimentally testedwhether an individual’s task expectations influence learningfrom feedback on mathematics problems. Specifically, wemanipulated undergraduate students’ beliefs about thedifficulty of the task to influence their expectations forsuccess. Students (N = 160) were randomly assigned to one offour learning conditions based on a crossing of two factors:task expectations (easy or hard) and feedback during problemsolving (yes or no). On a final transfer test, feedback led tohigher scores than no feedback for those who expected thetask to be easy. But, feedback led to marginally lower scoresfor those who expected the task to be hard. Results suggestthat expecting the task to be hard and to experience failurecan lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. When learning fromfeedback, students should set their expectations for success.