The present study, based on the work of Dweck (2000) and her description of helpless and mastery-orientated children, was designed to find a new, simple and economic way of assessing helplessness while testing a child's intelligence. Two hundred and thirty-two Austrian grammar-school children, previously classified as either helpless or mastery-oriented, were tested with the Adaptive Intelligence Diagnosticum (AID 2; Kubinger and Wurst, 2000), a German intelligence test-battery for children and adolescents. During the testing, the children were asked if they would prefer to continue with easier, equally difficult or harder items after each task block. Analysis of variance revealed that it is possible to identify helpless subjects during the regular test procedure with AID 2. (Contains 2 notes and 5 tables.)