Reviews a series of studies documenting that key aspects of helpless reactions to failure are present in preschool and early elementary school children. Proposes a preliminary model in which a general conception of self and the notion of this self as an object of contingent worth are sufficient conditions for helplessness. (HTH)

Individual differences in industriousness are discussed. It is proposed that reinforcement for increased physical or cognitive performance, or the tolerance of aversive stimulation, gives a reward value to the sensation of high effort and reduces effort's aversiveness. Applications for self-control, moral development, and education are described.…

A workable referral system, using resources within a school and within the community, becomes important when a sudden death or suicide occurs. When managing a crisis, helping professionals need to have the means for restoring a school and community to its precrisis equilibrium. Provides specific information pertinent to developing an effective…

Forty-eight young adults with mental retardation were placed into high and low learned helplessness groups based on responses to a questionnaire. Participants were presented with vignettes and asked what they would do. Results found low learned helplessness participants obtained significantly higher decision-making scores. Additional information…

Argues that little research has been directed toward exploring cognitive variables that characterize students with poor school attendance. Presents the findings of a pilot study that compared a small sample of truants and non-truants on locus of control and attributional style. Finds that attributional style is a significant factor in explaining…

A powerful practical reclaiming strategy for youth at risk is to tap their potential for service to others. This counters a sense of learned helplessness. The term "learned helplessness" (Seligman, 1975) comes to mind when the author thinks about when she began working with troubled youth more than 20 years ago. Her and her co-workers often spoke…

Canadian data from the 1998 Cross-National Survey on Health Behaviors in School-Aged Children were analyzed to examine the effects of school experiences on personal health (physical health, mental health, self-esteem, helplessness, and body image) and interpersonal relationships (number of close friends and making friends) among adolescents.…

This paper reviews the development of attribution theory as it relates to sport from Fritz Heider's original model of attribution theory in 1958 to the present. The original model explains that individuals use four attribution factors to interpret and predict the outcome of an event--ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. Bernard Weiner built…

This paper surveys and evaluates the research since 1975 on college and university student suicidality in the United States. It focuses on factors which contribute to suicidality, preventive responses to suicide and how well the preventive responses address the contributing factors. Contributing factors examined include various feeling states…

Both external locus of control (i.e., a generalized expectancy that reinforcement is controlled by luck or fate instead of oneself) and internal locus of attribution (i.e., beliefs that success or failure result from an individual's actions rather than external causes) have been related to depression. To examine the relationship of attributions…

A study was made to determine whether there exists a group of overpersisting children who are considered mastery-oriented because of their persistence but who actually demonstrate characteristics of learned helplessness. Subjects were 71 females and 84 males from fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classrooms. Children's scores on the Intellectual…

A study concerning the mother's mental representation of herself as a caregiver focused on: (1) a conceptual framework developed for the purpose of describing and explaining internal working models of caregiving; and (2) efforts to define caregivers' representations of content and process that seem to be associated with attachment insecurity.…

Locus of control is considered a primary factor in the difference between students' high and low achievement. This phenomenon is defined as a polar construct which refers to the degree to which individuals view their successes and failures as either contingent upon their own behaviors (internal locus of control) or independent of them (external…

John Bowlby's theory of affectional bonding and the reformulated learned helplessness theory of depression were integrated into a multivariate model in order to expand the breadth of current attributional theories of depression. This retrospective study focused upon the quality of parent-child relations, the types of discipline parents employed,…

This study investigated the reformulated theory of learned helplessness, centering around attributional style in the cause of cognitive and emotional deficits. Subjects (N=58) were undergraduate and graduate psychology students at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Subjects were divided into an experimental group (N=30) who received…