Personal conceptions of intelligence: a developmental study in Portugal

Theories of Intelligence in Children with Reading Disabilities: A Training Proposal

A recent trend in the study of reading difficulties promotes multidimensional intervention, focusing on the reciprocal influences exerted by cognitive and emotional-motivational variables. This study evaluated improvements in reading performance as a function of metacognitive training in 36 children ( M age = 8.7 yr.) with different representations of intelligence. Posttest evaluations show significantly more improvement in reading comprehension in children with an incremental theory of intelligence. These results indicate the importance of treatment programmes that take into account both the specificity of deficits and factors relating to the domain of motivation.

Personal conceptions of intelligence affect outcome in a multimedia reading training program

Personal conceptions of intelligence seem to make a significant contribution to overcoming a reading deficit, as indicated in our earlier research. The present aim was to assess improvements in reading-decoding following training of children with reading-decoding problems and different conceptions of intelligence (incremental or entity). It was expected that treatment of children with an incremental representation would improve more. Participants were 20 children (10 girls, 10 boys) whose average age was 8.6 yr., who attended Grade 3 of elementary school, and who were selected from 675 pupils. Children were given a multimedia test to measure motivational factors such as conceptions of intelligence, achievement goals, perception of controllability, and causal attributions. The participants took part in a multimedia training. Posttest evaluations showed more improvement in reading-decoding by children holding an incremental theory of intelligence. The importance of treatment programmes in which account is taken of both specificity of deficits and motivational factors should be explored further as the present sample was very small.

PERSONAL CONCEPTIONS OF INTELLIGENCE: CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS BETWEEN PORTUGUESE AND ITALIAN STUDENTS

This article presents some results of an intercultural study on personal conceptions of intelligence. The sample includes 1,540 students, 811 Italians and 729 Portuguese, from both sexes and of different socioeconomic statuses, of secondary Grades 10 and 12 and of the 1st grade of several university courses in both countries. The instrument used was The Personal Conceptions of Intelligence Scale (Faria, 2003), with 26 items, translated and adapted to Portuguese and Italian. The level of education and the cultural context appear as the only variables with either principal and interaction effects on the differentiation of personal conceptions of intelligence, which are analyzed according to the particularities of Italian and Portuguese school systems.

Conceptions de l’intelligence, orientations de buts et stratégies d’apprentissage chez des adultes en reprise d’études

Cette étude a pour objectif de tester un modèle de la motivation d’accomplissement chez des adultes en reprise d’études. Elle examine, à l’aide de questionnaires, le rôle des conceptions de l’intelligence, des buts et du sentiment de compétence sur les stratégies d’études, de même que sur la performance à l’examen de fin d’année. Les résultats font ressortir l’effet positif du but d’acquisition ; pourtant, cet usage n’affecte pas la réussite à l’examen. Un sentiment de compétence élevé par rapport à l’examen prédit une bonne performance scolaire, alors qu’une orientation vers un but de performance d’approbation sociale a plutôt un effet négatif sur la performance finale.

Sex differences in the personal conceptions of intelligence: particularities of the Portuguese cultural context

Several empirical studies have implicated helplessness as a problem in girls' lack of achievement, generally associated with static conceptions of intelligence. Yet, two studies aiming to explore sex differences in personal conceptions of intelligence, carried out with Portuguese samples of 222 and 2,106 subjects, respectively, using a 15-item rating scale to measure personal conceptions of intelligence adapted for Portuguese adolescents (11 to 17 years old), did not find sex differences, suggesting that certain specific characteristics of the Portuguese cultural context and its underlying socialization processes may have altered the expected kind of differentiation. Researchers should investigate whether success is not stereotypically attributed to male role norms and the importance of arousal of standards of achievement for women in the Portuguese culture.