Examiner Comments During Intelligence Testing: an Attributional Analysis

Abstract

Most previous studies that have considered the effects of examiner comments during the ad ministration of intelligence tests were conducted within the framework of reinforcement theory. This study is a descriptive analysis of examiner comments from the perspective of attributional theory of achievement motivation. Transcripts of examiners' administrations of intelligence tests to children referred because of learning difficulties showed that comments that fell into the attribu tional categories of Task Difficulty, Effort, Ability, Practice, and Fatigue were distributed unevenly across subtests. A wide range of individual variability among examiners also was found.