Feedback in Written Instruction: The Place of Response Certitude

This paper reviews written feedback from an information-processing perspective. The first section discusses the question of feedback as a reinforcer, and describes the feedback paradigm used as a conceptual guide for the following sections. In the second section we evaluate research on the form and content of feedback. In the last section, a model is developed that applies concepts from servocontrol theory to the feedback sequence. Finally, we report three experiments which support the major predictions of the control model.