Feedback: Is It All Useful?

Among psychologists one of the more frequently observed phenomena is the enhancing effect of feedback on performance and learning (for a review see Annett. It is believed that the term feedback was originally coined by electrical engineers and was defined as a regenerative process. For the purposes of the present discussion however, feedback refers to the process whereby information about the effectiveness of an individual's actions or responses to a task is reported to that individual. Although it is recognized that an individual's environment is crammed with information about many things, only information that the individual accepts is considered feedback.