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A Developmental Perspective on Children’s Understanding of Causal Attributions in Achievement-related Situations

The development of children’s understanding of causal attributions for academic situations was investigated. Causal attributions are part of the metacognitive knowledge children have about themselves as problem-solvers. Children (7, 9, 11 years old) were asked to explain the failure or success outcomes of familiar academic situations that they could experience. They rated these causes along the dimensions of locus of causality, controllability, stability, and globality. Results show that children formulated spontaneously a diversity of attributions to explain academic performance. Some age differences were observed in the use of causal attributions: 11-year-old children were more likely to explain their performance by their familiarity with the task, but less likely to mention external factors. Age differences were also observed in children’s perception of causal dimensions for attributions to effort and strategy but not to familiarity. With increasing age children perceived these causal attributions to be more internal, more controllable, and less stable. Finally, children perceived attributions to be more controllable, internal, and stable in success than in failure situations. Theoretical and methodological aspects for studying the development of attributions and causal dimensions are discussed.