Mothers who exhibited high illusory control showed increased susceptibility to learned helplessness when they tried to solve a child-care task. The early attributional and behavioral style characteristic of high illusory control may be a precursor to overcontrolling, interfering behaviors during the toddler years. (RH)

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…