The stability of individual differences in test anxiety and learned helplessness over a 2-year period and their relation to concurrent and future school achievement were examined. Several issues regarding the assessment of learned helplessness are also addressed. 82 children were administered measures of test anxiety and helplessness in the third grade and again in the fifth grade. Teachers also provided reports of learned helpless and mastery-oriented behaviors at these 2 grade levels. It was found that: (a) both self-report and teacher-report measures of helplessness were stable over the 2-year period; (b) helplessness in the third grade was related to achievement test scores in the fifth grade; and (c) teacher reports may be a viable means of identifying helplessness. These findings are discussed in terms of cognitive developmental changes in children's understanding of effort and ability, and their implications for the assessment of learned helplessness are outlined.

The stability of individual differences in test anxiety and learned helplessness over a 2-year period and their relation to concurrent and future school achievement were examined. Several issues regarding the assessment of learned helplessness are also addressed. 82 children were administered measures of test anxiety and helplessness in the third grade and again in the fifth grade. Teachers also provided reports of learned helpless and mastery-oriented behaviors at these 2 grade levels. It was found that: (a) both self-report and teacher-report measures of helplessness were stable over the 2-year period; (b) helplessness in the third grade was related to achievement test scores in the fifth grade; and (c) teacher reports may be a viable means of identifying helplessness. These findings are discussed in terms of cognitive developmental changes in children's understanding of effort and ability, and their implications for the assessment of learned helplessness are outlined.

In three experiments, adult humans were tested in a feature-positive or feature-negative simultaneous symbol task. In Experiment 1, some persons focused on the correct side of the stimulus cards, whereas other persons focused on the not-correct side of the stimulus cards. The feature-positive group learned faster than the feature-negative group did in the correct side condition; the feature-negative group learned faster than the feature-positive group did in the not-correct side condition. In Experiments 2 and 3, all persons focused on both the correct and not-correct sides of the stimulus cards. Under these circumstances, feature-positive and feature-negative performances were comparable. These results indicated that the usual superiority of feature-positive over feature-negative learning results from a tendency to attend to only a portion of the stimulus array.

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