Measuring the Effects of Failure with Learning Disabled Children

Abstract

The effects of failure on performance for children diagnosed as learning disabled (reading) and normal children were compared with a simple clinical measure. As hypothesized, learning disabled children stressed with failure scored significantly (p <.05) poorer than stressed normals on a reading posttest. Learning disabled childred were seen to have developed a learned helplessness response mode and experienced greater difficulty in recovering from failure than normal cohorts. The results were interpreted as lending support to the use of a clinical measure in assessing the role played by failure in children's learning disorders.

Key Words:

• learning disorders
• emotional reactions to failure
• measuring coping with failure

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raymond S. Dean

Joyce Laing works in the Department of Child and Family Psychiatry, Playfield House, Cupar, Fife, and is a Consultant Art Therapist to Psychiatric Hospitals and Prisons and Chairwoman of the Scottish Society of Art and Psychology.