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THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY AND TASKCONDITIONS ON LEARNING AND TRANSFERG. O. M. Leith a & E. Anne Trown aa Sussex University and Memorial University of Newfoundland City of Leicester College ofEducationPublished online: 09 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: G. O. M. Leith & E. Anne Trown (1970) THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY AND TASK CONDITIONS ONLEARNING AND TRANSFER, Innovations in Education & Training International, 7:3, 181-188, DOI: 10.1080/1355800700070301

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PROGRAMMEDLEARNING

Vol. 7 July 1970 No. 3

THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY AND TASKCONDITIONS ON LEARNING AND TRANSFER

G. O. M. LEITH and E. ANNE TROWNSussex University and Memorial University of Newfoundland

City of Leicester College of Education

Abstract: To test hypotheses about the optimalplace of rules in school learning tasks 124 12-year-old children from a single campus werecategorised by ability, sex and two personalitytraits -- extraversion/introversion and generalanxiety. The learning task was a program onvectors from which rules were 'abstracted andgiven either before or after sections of the pro-gram containing practice examples.

Further evidence for the superiority of rulesfollowing practice was obtained. Significantinteractions of treatments and extraversion onpost- and transfer-tests showed, however, thatthis occurred because the "rules before" wassignificantly poorer than the "rules after" con-dition for extraverts of both above and belowaverage ability. There was no significantdifference between the treatments for introverts.Anxiety level differences were not significant,but anxious children were slightly better thannon-anxious.

INTRODUCTION

THIS experiment was undertaken as afurther exploration of two areas of study.One of these is a series of investigations

of the role of reviews and previews inovercoming conflict and interferencebetween successive parts of a learningtask. The other concerns the influenceof two personality variables—anxiety andintroversion /extraversion—on learning.

One of the authors has found thatlosses in recall and transfer from mean-ingful learning tasks may be accountedfor by the occurrence of large amounts ofinter-section interference between partsof a task, but that such conflict can beovercome by including summaries at theend of each section. Also effective is theprovision of an overall final summary,though previews, whether given as awhole or distributed throughout thelearning material, are ineffective (Leithand McHugh, 1967; Leith and Blake,1967; Leith and Webb, 1968; Leith, Biranand Opollot, 1969). The present reporttakes up the same theme, while varyingthe breadth of summaries and the subject-

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matter. Single or double rules wereemployed rather than the much moreextended summary passages of three ofthe experiments (e.g. ten propositions, ahalf-hour lesson, 1,000 words)" though oneother study used relatively short abstrac-tions. Previous work was concerned withSocial Anthropology, English, Geographyand Physics. Modern Mathematics waschosen to extend the scope of theexperiments.

The other aspect of the research is aninquiry into the extent to which anxietyand extraversion are influential in deter-mining achievement. In refining ourknowledge of psychology, there is a grow-ing rapprochement between the psycho-logy of individual differences and thepsychology of learning. Not merely arequestions being asked about the ways inwhich children and adults may differfrom each other in abilities, attainmentsand personality or about the generalprinciples of learning which apply to allorganisms. There is a growing tendencyto ask: " What significance have indivi-dual differences for how particular peoplelearn and what they achieve? " Theimplication is that individuals may welldiffer in their manner of approachinglearning tasks, that some methods ofinstruction may be suitable for a propor-tion but not for all pupils and that ideallywe should match methods, media andorder of presentation, in teaching, toparticular students' strategies and modesof learning, their previously acquiredknowledge, skills and aptitudes and theirexperience of success and failure.

This is the eventual aim of thoseteachers and psychologists who areendeavouring to establish principles forgenuinely individual instruction and is a.prime motive for research into computer-

aided instruction. There has, however,been little success, as yet, in arriving atsettled conclusions—indeed most of thework has been carried out in the traditionof individual differences only. Thusresearch has largely been directed atquestions like: " is anxiety correlatedwith achievement in school? "; " whichpersonality type is most or least success-ful in school and university? " Again,there have been inquiries into the validityof theoretical points of view, e.g. thatanxiety hinders complex learning atextremes of the scale (too much, toolittle), though moderate amounts may behelpful.

Research on these points tends to beconflicting (Warburton, 1962; Lavin,1967; Rushton, 1966). Several reasonsmay be put forward for the conflicts.Thus, there may be changes with age inthe personality structures which mostreadily meet with success. The differentconditions of primary, secondary anduniversity education give prima faciegrounds for expecting that independenceand submissiveness may find fulfilmentat different times or in different places.Another reason may be a fundamentalinstability in personality assessments incontrast with the relative consistency ofcognitive measures. A third reason mightbe that conditions of learning, teachingand testing have different effects ondifferent people so that, if thesedifferences are neglected in a study, theywill tend to cancel each other out orbecome revealed, now in one direction,now in another, depending on the pre-dominance of unreported features of thesituation or the sample.

That personality assessment is lessconsistent than attainment or intelligencemeasurement need not be argued.

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INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY AND TASK CONDITIONS ON LEARNING 183

Evidence for the first and third of theabove points is beginning to accumulate.Some of this evidence has been sum-marised elsewhere (Leith, 1969; Amariaand Leith, 1969). A brief outline is givenbelow.

Ten-year-old children in an experimenton the influence of several degrees ofguidance on learning and applying con-cepts showed that, though there were nooverall differences, this was becauseabsence of structure and guidancefavoured non-anxious but not anxiouschildren, while a great amount of structur-ing and prompting was helpful to anxiousbut not to non-anxious children (Leithand Bosett, 1967). In comparing childrenof different personality types, the mostsuccessful were anxious introverts—afinding which was repeated with 12-year-olds in a study of social reinforcementand achievement (Leith and Davis, 1969).The learning materials of the first studywere used again with students in a furthereducation college where the finding was,once more, that the methods of guidancemade no overall difference but that,within methods, opposite types benefitedor were unsuccessful. This time, how-ever, the maximum amount of promptingand guidance led to poor performance onthe part of the extraverts and goodperformance by introverts. There wasalso a very great difference betweenanxious and non-anxious halves of thesample—the latter having the clearadvantage.

A further study employed two care-fully validated forms of a programmedtext which were prepared and tested soas to give equivalent results. One formwas highly structured, the other requireda much greater tolerance of uncertaintyin searching for explanatory principles.

Over 200 college of education studentsworked through the programs and weregiven transfer tests which requiredapplication and re-organisation ofprinciples. Extraverts were more success-ful than introverts with the discovery typeof program. Introverts were good withthe clearly structured well-guided onethough extraverts were significantlypoorer with this type of learning. Overall,and cutting across this finding, non-anxious (below the median) subjects werebetter than anxious ones (Shadbolt andLeith, 1967).

One further study may be cited whichbrings in another dimension. Adults(aged around 40) were given training inthe new decimal currency system andexchange, and conversion from thepresent coinage. One method was asuccinct set of rules followed by a self-correctional test (together with a set ofsimulated coins). This may be con-sidered to involve less structuring andguidance than the other methods whichwere: a linear programmed text withexplicit practice in conversion, etc. andwith directed coin handling; and the samematerial presented simultaneously (i.e.group paced) on sound tape. Theunstructured method showed a significantpositive relationship with extraversion(i.e. extraverts got higher scores thanintroverts) and a significant negativerelationship with neuroticism (generalanxiety)—in other words the greater thedegree of anxiety, the lower the testscore. On the other hand, the linearprogrammed text group showed zerorelationships between personality andscores and the tape group larger but alsonon-significant correlations (Leith et al.,1968). A small-step linear program onspelling given to secondary school

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184 PROGRAMMED LEARNING

children also showed no relationshipsbetween personality and achievement.The possibility thus arises that when thestress of difficulty is avoided, as in small-step programs, personality differences donot emerge but, when the mental effort isgreat, as in the studies cited earlier,personality factors have some influenceon achievement.

THE EXPERIMENT

The entire project, of which this is onepart, was carried out in two Leicestershirejunior high schools which are situated onthe same campus, children being allocatedto one school or the other alphabetically.From a pool of 371 boys and girls agedbetween 11 years 8 months and 13 years4 months in the second-year classes, 160children of each sex were randomlychosen. After being dichotomised with-in schools and sexes at the median scoresfor general ability (Raven's Matrices)anxiety and extra version/ introversion(H.B. Personality Inventory, Hallworth,1962), they were assigned randomly toone of ten groups. Thus each groupcontained 32 children, a boy and a girlfrom each school above the medianintelligence, of more than average anxietyand of greater than average extraversion,and so on, completing all combinationsof ability, anxiety and extraversion. Fourof these groups were assigned to treat-ment conditions in which, in addition toworking through a programmed text onmodern mathematics, children were givenverbally formulated rules either one at atime or two at a time and either beforethe section(s) they applied to or afterthem. In other words, a learner wouldread a rule, and a short section of pn>gram, then a second rule and anothersection of program, or he would be given

the two rules together followed by thetwo sections. Alternatively, he got therules after sections.

The programmed texts were based onthe approach of the Midlands Mathe-matics Experiment, chapter 12, Book I.This was considered particularly suitablesince it was completely new work and yetrequired no particular background inorder to enter it. They were validated infour schools different from the experi-mental schools.

Sixteen rules were identified, each ofwhich was given expression in a sequenceof frames containing exemplification inexercises and problems. Each of theframes in sequences embodying the rulesrequired a response by the pupil, uponcompletion of which he was givenimmediate feedback in the form ofknowledge of correct result. The totalnumber of frames was 246.

In one of the schools the program wasadministered twice a week in lessons of45 minutes duration for four weeks. Theother school had some lessons of 35minutes only. It was intended that twosections should be completed in eachlesson but since lesson time was too shortin one of the schools, these pupils werenot strictly scheduled but neverthelesscompleted the task within the same totalperiod. The tests were given immediatelyafter completion of the program (i.e. inthe fifth week). One of these testsassessed knowledge of the material ofthe program by means of test items onaddition of vectors. The transfer test wasmade up of items not taught, viz.subtraction of vectors.

For the purpose of this analysis thegroups reading rules one or two at atime were pooled. The treatments com-pared are thus reading rules before or

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INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY AND TASK CONDITIONS ON LEARNING 185

after practice examples. This design givesa total of 128 children with eight in eachsub-group (categorised by treatments,ability, anxiety and extraversion). Foursubjects were " lost" during the course ofthe experiment, two from one cell and oneeach from two of the others. To com-pensate for this, the missing scores werefilled in by inserting the mean score ofthe original cell (i.e. group of four sub-jects) and four degrees of freedom weresubtracted from the total number. Thisis essentially equivalent to carrying outan analysis on the means of the sub-groups and makes computation easier.

It was expected that the children read-ing rules after practice would achievehigher mean scores than those receivingrules first. The more anxious childrenwere expected, at this stage, to scorehigher than the non-anxious. The mostdiflBcult prediction to make was that ofthe interaction of personality and attain-ment. Learning from the rules-first con-dition was expected to benefit pupils whowelcome clear guidance and preciselyoutlined structure but to handicap thosewho react against the imposition ofstructure. From previous evidence andfrom observation there seems to be aclass of individuals whose preferredmethod of learning is to plunge into aninitially confused situation, manipulateand test correspondences and connections,and try hypotheses until a structureemerges. They are perhaps those peoplewho resist being told how to get to placesin a locality but prefer to keep tryingalternative routes until they can get fromanywhere to any other place withoutalways knowing how they did so or beingable to explain. This class of pupils wasthought likely to get lower scores whenreading rules before practising, even

though the opportunity for engaging in asearch strategy was limited, since theyare probably impatient of initial attemptsto define structure. Which categories ofpersonality fit pupils with these differentstrategies or styles are less certain. Inolder subjects the strategies go along withextraversion and introversion, whereas-there is some evidence for expectinganxious and non-anxious junior schoolage children to react in these ways. Thepossibility is open, too, that 12-year-oldsare at a transition point in development.

RESULTS

The post-test and transfer test scores wereeach given a 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 factorialanalysis of variance. The post-test datashowed two significant effects. An abilitylevels difference accounted for more thana third of the total variance, the moreintelligent children having very signifi-cantly higher scores than those belowaverage in I.Q. The second finding wasa significant treatments X extraversioninteraction (p <0*05) which is shown inTable I.

Follow-up tests were made at each levelof personality. There was no differencebetween the two groups of introverts, butthe Rules After condition was superior tothe Rules Before in the case of extraverts,(t = 2-46; p <0-02, two-tailed). In fact,the rules before practice debilitated extra-verts whose performance under this con-dition was clearly different from that ofthe other three groups.

Analysis of the transfer test scoresrevealed a similar pattern. Over one-third of the total variance was taken up bythe difference between ability levels.There was also a treatments X extraver-sion interaction which was significant at

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TABLE I

MEAN POST-TEST SCORES OF INTROVERTS AND EXTRAVERTSUNDER Two CONDITIONS OF LEARNING

Personality

IntrovertsExtravertsOverall

Before Practice54-7542-7248-74

Position of RulesAfter Practice Overall

52-56 53-665506 48-8853-81 51-27

= 5-02; df 108

TABLE II

MEAN TRANSFER TEST SCORES OF INTROVERTS AND EXTRAVERTSUNDER Two CONDITIONS OF LEARNING

Personality

IntrovertsExtravertsOverall

Before Practice39-7525-1632-45

x,-x.

Position of RulesAfter Practice Overall

36-88 38-3142-88 34-0239-88 36-17

= 633; df 108

less than the 0-05 level. Table II sum-marises the results.Introverts, though again better if theywere given their rules before practice,were not significantly so. Extraverts,however, were much lower in transferwhen given rules first. A t-test (two-tailed) showed that the difference wassignificant at less than the 0*01 level(t = 2-80).

Two further points were of interest inthe analysis. The non-significant Anxietylevels effect appeared both in the post-test and transfer test data and all inter-actions of anxiety with the other factorshad F ratios of less than 2-00. Subjectsabove the median anxiety level were, infact, slightly higher in post-test and intransfer test scores.

The other question under investigationwas whether the provision of rules before

or after practice gives better achievement—in conformity with four previousinvestigations.

In the present case this has beenestablished for extraverts, though not forintroverts. Since, however, the rules-after condition was expected to give betterresults, one-tailed t-tests were carried outto compare the means of those receivingrules before and rules after practice. Theresults are tabulated below in Table III.Though results were in the expecteddirection, they achieved significanceoverall between the two conditions oflearning only in the test of transfer.

A further aspect of the results should benoted. The pattern in which rules afterwas better than rules before, for extra-verts (but not for introverts) was repeatedat both levels of ability.

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INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY AND TASK CONDITIONS ON LEARNING 187

TABLE III

ONE-TAILED COMPARISONS OF GROUPS LEARNING RULES BEFORE ANDRULES AFTER PRACTICE

Rules Before Rules AfterPost-test 48-74 39*88Transfer test 32-55 53-81

DISCUSSION

Many previous studies have discussedrelationships between personality andachievement. Almost all of them, how-ever, have failed both to inquire into thenature of the teaching given and to con-sider the possibility that individuals ofdifferent temperaments may be helped orhindered in their learning by differencesin teaching method. The present researchis based on findings in two series ofexperiments. In one it has been shownthat interference between the sections ofverbal learning tasks may be overcome bymeans of reviews or summaries given atthe end of sections, though the samematerial given in advance is of no valuein enhancing learning. One questionwhich arises is how small or large eachsection should be for optimum effective-ness. The sections in this experimentwere short and the rules were somewhatdifficult and abstract.

The second series of experiments whichsuggested the hypotheses tested, obtainedresults in which children of 10 to 11years and students of over 16 yearslearned to solve problems under varyingconditions of ambiguity and structure.Thus one condition contained sets ofproblems which had been given a randomsequence, whereas another arrangedthem in sets and gave structuring promptssuch as statements of rule and correctanswers. With younger children, aninteraction of anxiety with method wasfound, whereas the older students showed

Difference5-077-43

t1-431-66

PN.S.005

an interaction of extraversion and learn-ing condition, anxious subjects beingpoorer than non-anxious.

This gave rise to the hypothesis thatteaching materials' constructed so as toinduce errors and to arouse ambiguityand uncertainty would favour extraverts,while carefully structured, clearly definedsequences of teaching material would givebetter results with introverts, the anxioushaving lower scores than non-anxioussubjects. These predictions were con-firmed with college of education studentswho were given carefully prepared self-instructional programs on genetics whichwere constructed to implement theseconditions.

Further work was clearly demandedwhich sought to find if the effects ofanxiety, and extraversion, could bereplicated with children of 12-13 yearsand if the proposed explanation of theinteraction in terms of tolerance forstructure could be confirmed. It wasconsidered that giving rules which explainor cover the logic of practice exampleswould be likely to impose a greaterdegree of structuring than giving thesame rules after practice examples. Thus,some learners would react unfavourablyto the rules-first condition, and : hence,achieve a poorer performance than whenthe results of their mode of attack areconfirmed by means of a formulated rule.On the other hand, other pupils—thosehaving a greater tolerance for formalguidance—would not be put off by the

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initial position of the rules though theirstatus with rules after practice in a pro-grammed learning sequence might not beseriously lowered.

The results of the experiment supportthe notion that individuals have differentapproaches to these learning tasks.Furthermore, at the age of 12-13 years,these differences in methods of learningcan be categorised as belonging tochildren who are more or less introvertedor extraverted (above an.d below themedian score on a personality inventory).

The writer's previous work withchildren of about this age has indicatedthat, if anything, greater anxiety (scoresabove the median) results in higherachievement. In the present case this isin fact so, though no significantdifferences were revealed.

It may be stressed that the findingswere obtained under regular schoolconditions (save that self-instructionalprograms were used to avoid teachervariance). Children from two differentschools and both sexes were equallydistributed across the experimental con-ditions but no attempt was made toreduce these sources of variance in theanalysis. These measures were taken inorder to overcome the objection thatexperimental results obtained in con-trolled conditions are unlikely to show upin the " noisy " conditions of the schoolsituation.

REFERENCES

AMARIA, RODA P. and LEITH, G. O. M. (1969)"Individual versus co-operative learningII: the influence of personality," Educa-tional Research 11, 193-199.

HALLWORTH, H. J. (1962) The H.B. PersonalityInventory (unpub.). University of Birming-ham.

LAVIN, D. E. (1967) The Prediction ofAcademic Performance. New York:John Wiley.

Leith, G. O. M. (1969) "Learning and per-sonality" in W. R. Dunn and C. Holroyd(eds.), Aspects of Educational TechnologyII. London: Methuen.

LEITH, G. O. M., BIRAN, L. A. and OPOLLOT,J.A. (1969) "The place of review inmeaningful verbal learning sequences,"Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science1, 113-118.

LEITH, G. O. M. and BLAKE, I. H. (1967)Teaching the Formulation of Definitions;a further study of the place of integratingrules. Research Reports on ProgrammedLearning No. 16. University of Birming-ham.

LEITH, G. O. M. and BOSETT, R. (1967) Modeof Learning and Personality. ResearchReports on Programmed Learning No. 14.University of Birmingham.

LEITH, G. O. M. and DAVIS, T. N. (1969) "Theinfluence of social reinforcement onachievement," Educational Research 11,132-137.

LEITH, G., LISTER, A., TEALL, C. and BELLING-HAM, J. (1968) "Teaching the new decimalcurrency by programmed instruction,"Industrial Training International 3, 424-427.

LEITH, G. O. M. and MCHUGH, G. A. R. (1967)"The place of theory in learning consecu-tive conceptual tasks," Education Review19, 110-117.

LEITH, G. O. M. and WEBB, C. C. (1968) "Acomparison of four methods of pro-grammed instruction with and withoutteacher intervention," Education Review21, 25-31.

LEITH, G. O. M. and WISDOM, B. (1969) AnInvestigation of the Effects of Error-making and Personality on Learning.Unpublished report, University of Birming-ham.

RUSHTON, J. (1966) "The relationshipsbetween personality characteristics andscholastic success in eleven-year-oldchildren," British Journal of EducationalPsychology 36, 178-184.

SHADBOLT, D. R. and LEITH, G. O. M. (1967)Mode of Learning and Personality II.University of Birmingham.

WARBURTON, F. W. (1962) "The measurementof personality III," Educational Research4, 193-206.

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