ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of attitudes in the acquisition of knowledge. It focuses on certain factors that may stimulate behavior necessary to acquire intellectual and motor skills. Knowledge may refer to the body of intellectual and motor skills a person has acquired through learning. It may also refer to information to a collection of propositions, each of which is held to be true with a certain probability. While knowledge may be acquired in many ways, a primary way in educational settings is through a written or oral communication. The chapter considers two general questions related to the acquisition process itself. One concerns the mediating effects of reception and counterarguing upon beliefs in the conclusions drawn from new information. The second concerns the indirect effects of new information bearing upon one belief upon other, unmentioned but related beliefs.
