Nonviolent resistance (NVR) is a new training model aimed at helping parents deal effectively with their helplessness, isolation, and escalatory interactions with their children. The purpose of this study is to evaluate training in NVR with the parents of children with acute behavior problems. Seventy-three parents (41 families) were randomly…

This article is about the feelings of powerlessness that professionals feel to cure learning disability and to answer questions such as "why do I have a learning disability?". We describe how Emma showed us through role play what it was like to have learning difficulties. This article is interesting to people with learning disabilities because…

Discusses the phenomenon of false fire alarms, the deliberate, intentional false reporting of fires, by mentally troubled persons as a primitive kind of help-seeking behavior. Several common themes found by reviewing false alarm cases are presented. Suggests that identifying the intrapsychic dynamics of false alarm reporters could be useful in…

Research suggests that motivation of autistic children can be increased and that this may be a crucial variable in the acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of their treatment gains. Discussion focuses on effects of failure on motivation, learned helplessness, shared control and increased success, and strategies for increasing exposure to…

This article reports on an investigation of students' experiences of learning, using a framework that focuses on the concepts of alienation and engagement. Thirty-six third year chemical engineering students were interviewed about their learning experiences. Alienation is defined here as the absence of a relationship that students might desire or…

Concludes that major market local television newscasts include substantial doses of helplessness, most of it at extreme levels. Specifically, members of the general public are often presented as helpless, and, by implication, so are television viewers. (FL)

Twenty-four learning disabled students (10 to 14 years old) assigned to three reward schedules (response contingent reward, 100 percent noncontingent reward, and 50 percent random noncontingent reward) were asked to replicate block designs and solve coding problems. No differences were found in errors, but Ss in noncontingent conditions…

Introduces the concept of learned hopelessness, with special attention on its development from the helplessness theory of depression, and its application to studies of achievement motivation. Highlights conceptual and assessment issues that arise in researching learned hopelessness and achievement motivation. (DSK)

Correlational analysis suggested interactions among aspects of locus of control and aspects of death fear varying along the death/dying, self/other, and overt/covert continua. These data enable a more complete understanding of the role that perceived controllability of life events play in determining individual reactions to one's own or another's…

Using a version of the "learned helplessness" paradigm, assesses mothers' performance on a solvable task following pretreatments that involved exposure to an infant cry but that differed in the mothers' ability to exert control over termination of the cry. Proposes that learned helplessness models are relevant to the study of…

In order to investigate sex-role identity and learned helplessness as possible mediating factors affecting performance on formal operational tasks, the responses of 60 male and female adolescents were assessed. Contrary to expectations, the performances of individuals with feminine versus masculine sex roles did not differ significantly.…

Explored prevention of learned helplessness through the use of thermal biofeedback training and varied explanations of performance. It was found that only in the biofeedback group receiving accurate feedback was there any prevention of the subsequent development of learned helplessness behavior. (Author)

Learning specialists and classroom teachers can help eliminate negative suggestions among students with learning problems and replace them with positive ones. Indirect suggestive techniques, such as visualization, are described. (CL)

Assessed whether experimentally induced learned helplessness on a cognitive training task generalized to a situationally dissimilar social interaction test task. No significant differences were observed between groups on the subsequent test task, showing that helplessness failed to generalize. (Author/ABB)

Four experiments used a common set of procedures to investigate the occurrence and the generalization of learned helplessness and latent inhibition in 10- to 11-year-old children. (MP)