The Effect of the Type of Goal Setting Procedure Task Difficulty and Feedback on Psychomotor Performance

The present experiment examined the effect of two levels of task difficulty (easy and difficult), two levels of feedback (feedback and no feedback), and three types of goal setting procedure (participative, assigned, and no goal setting) on performance. To control for effects due to goal difficulty, the assigned goals were yoked to the participative goals. A computerized letter cancellation task was employed to measure subject performance on three dependent variables: the number of correct. letter cancellations, the number of incorrect cancellations, and the reaction time between correct. cancellations ~ The results showed that the number of incorrect cancellations was not sensitive to the experimental manipulation; however, the number of correct cancellations and reaction time were responsive. Subjects correctly canceled more targets and had a faster reaction time on the easy task than the difficult one and when they received feedback than when they did not. There were no significant goal setting main effects; however, a significant interaction occurred between feedback and goal setting.