Abstract
Borkowski and colleagues (Borkowski, Carr, Rellinger, & Pressley, 1990; Borkowski, Johnston, & Reid, 1986; Borkowski & Muthukrishna, 1992) proposed a model that relates behavioral patterns of children facing school tasks with strategic knowledge, self-monitoring, motivation, attributions, self-esteem, and affective responses. These researchers suggested that good cognitive performance following a strategic approach increases general strategic knowledge, self-esteem, and associated feelings. In particular, the model predicts that students with learning disabilities (LD) who are not able to experience completely the effects of a strategic approach to the task do not spontaneously develop general metacognitive skills. Furthermore, they do show inadequate attribution to effort and depressive feelings. Positive correlations between metacognitive system components and affective responses were expected. Our work aimed to verify these predictions of the model. We compared two groups of preadolescents, with and without LD. Results showed that students with LD had less effective monitoring skills, lower attributions to effort, and a wider range of depressive symptoms than did students without LD. These results and the correlations obtained between the components of the model are discussed with reference to Borkowski's model.