The effects of self set or externally set goals on learning in an uncertain environment

Monitoring refers to online awareness and self-evaluation of one's goal-directed actions, while Control refers to the generation and selection of goal-directed actions (Osman, 2010a). The present study examines the extent to which external estimations of performance influence monitoring and control behaviors. To achieve this, a complex dynamic decision making task was used in which three different cues were manipulated in order to control three outcomes. The experiment was divided into two conditions. The Externally guided-condition received information designed to influence people's evaluation of control performance, whereas the Self-guided-condition was not provided this information. The findings revealed that control performance differed according to whether the success of one's actions was evaluated against external or self-guided estimations of performance. This article proposes that Monitoring behaviors can strongly influence control behaviors and this is achieved according to the way in which outcomes of decisions are evaluated. Finally, with respect to adult learning, the findings from this study suggest that setting one's own goals do not lead to improvements in learning when the task is a complex one.