The effect of cognitive and personality variables on mastery learning of nonsense syllables

The present study was designed to further investigate the role of prerequisite skills in mastery learning. Also of interest was the affect of general verbal and nonverbal ability and the general personality characteristics of need achievement, locus of control, debilitating anxiety, and facilitating anxiety.

One hundred and six undergraduate volunteers in psychology courses in a small southern university were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Paper-and-pencil measures of cognitive ability and personality constructs were obtained for each subject. The non-mastery group was presented nonsense syllables individually by computer and given only one opportunity to study them. The mastery group had the same treatment on the first trial but then were re-presented the NSS until they had learned them all. Subjects proceeded through the program until they had been presented ten lists of five nonsense syllables of increasing difficulty levels. Nonsense syllables were chosen as the task to minimize prerequisite skills. Since differences in mastery and non-mastery learning have been attributed to prerequisite skills there should have been no differences in the two groups. This was true.

There was no relationship between need achievement, locus of control, debilitating anxiety, and facilitating anxiety and persistence or learning. The only significant findings were between persistence and non-verbal ability on non-mastery learning and the general cognitive factors also predicted persistence for the easier task. Other than on the above mentioned, there was no interaction with difficulty levels. There was also no evidence of learning to learn.