COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE AND ATTENTION IN THE CLASSROOM - AN INTERACTIONBETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT ACADEMIC EXPERIENCES

Students' cognitive performance and allocation of attention can depend on the degree of consistency between their past and present experienc es in the classroom. Previous findings indicated that performance chan ge due to evaluation and social comparison manipulations were simultan eously affected by students' past personal academic experiences. The p resent study tested whether an attentional mechanism contributes towar d explaining this phenomenon. Sixty-four 13-14-year-old French boys, c lassified as high or low achievers, attended a new mathematics lesson while being exposed to social comparison and evaluation events consist ent versus inconsistent with their past academic experience. Allocatio n of attention during the lesson was assessed through students' incide ntal learning of task irrelevant materials. Performance was measured o n problem-solving tasks derived from the lesson. As expected, both per formance and allocation of attention were extremely sensitive to the d egree of consistency between students' past and present academic exper iences.