Influence of Self-Efficacy on Self-Regulation and Performance among Junior and Senior High-School Age Students

The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of self-efficacy on actual self-regulation during a verbal concept formation task of students, already known to be of average or above average cognitive ability, at two grade levels. Following the assessment of self-efficacy, students were observed while they attempted to solve four problems of varying difficulty. The major findings were that irrespective of differences in school grade and in cognitive ability, self-efficacy exerted significant influence on various aspects of self-regulation, such as monitoring of working time, task persistence, and rejection of correct hypotheses, as well as on performance. These results provided support for the construct validity of self-efficacy as different from cognitive competence.