Learned Helplessness, Self‐worth Motivation and Attribution Retraining for Primary School Children

Abstract

This study examined characteristics of 29 pupils (selected from an initial sample of 69 primary school children) whose performance on an arithmetic task deteriorated after failure. On the basis of their responses to a "mitigating circumstance" which could explain failure without implicating low ability as the cause (a description of the task as "very difficult"), subjects were classified as either learned helpless or motivated to protect self-worth. Both of these groups had lower self-concepts than the rest of the initial sample. Attribution retraining resulted in increased effort attributions and decreased inability attributions in the "learned helpless" group, and inoculated these subjects to the experience of failure. In the "self-worth group" there was an increase in effort attributions but no change in ability ratings or performance after failure, following training. Effort Ability Composite Scores' Internality Stability ~ M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M S D M SD LH sw Boys Girls (N = 8) (N=IO) -1.50 1.00 AcKNowLmcMENTs.--The author is grateful for the assistance of Iain Montgomery and John Davidson. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. M. L. Craske,

Group work as a strategy for attribution retraining in the Asian educational context of Singapore

“…There is evidence from Volet's (1999) study on the performance of South East Asian students, that the situation might indeed be different. Furthermore, contrary to early reports (Dweck, 1975;Craske, 1988) which were unable to establish any conclusive link between gender and motivational styles, recent studies (Koh & Galloway, 2006) showed a higher proportion of maladaptive males as compared to females. These findings thus serve to highlight the role of context and culture in influencing motivational patterns amongst individuals.…”

“…First, it was necessary to identify the motivational styles (mastery orientation, selfworth motive or learned-helplessness) of the students involved. This was carried out using an adaptation of the procedure devised by Craske (1988) in which the performance of the students in a series of four subject matter tests was used to identify their motivational styles. Secondly, once the students' motivational styles were known, it was then possible to conduct the intervention procedure, attribution retraining, and to assess its effect on students identified as maladaptive (self-worth motivated and learnedhelpless).…”

“…This objective forms the basis of 'attribution therapy' (Valins & Nisbett, 1971) and 'attribution retraining' (Dweck, 1975). The main strategy used by authors such as Dweck (1975) and Craske (1988), was to teach their test subjects to attribute failure experiences to lack of effort instead of lack of ability.…”

“…In this study, the motivational patterns of the 107 students were first assessed using one of the few measures of behaviour outcomes, a method developed by Craske (1988) and subsequently adapted by other researchers (Galloway, Leo, Rogers, & Armstrong, 1996;Koh & Galloway, 2006). This procedure had been used in subjects such as Mathematics, English and Biological Science.…”

“…The students were also told that the extent to which they helped one another would determine their performance in a series of tests that were to be conducted on a fortnightly basis. These tests were also used to assess the effectiveness of the retraining procedures in changing students' academic performance and failure attributions, following Craske's (1988) post-training procedure, in which the tests were administered to the students in both the Experimental group and the Control group. The outcome of the students' performance in those tests was then used to assess whether there were any changes in the distribution of motivational styles as compared to that obtained in the preintervention analysis.…”