Learning disabilities and learned helplessness: a heuristic approach
Hersh, C. A.
Stone, B. J.
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The International journal of neuroscience. 1996 Feb; 84(1-4): 103-13.
This study investigated whether students with learning disabilities exhibited learned helpless behavior at a greater rate than their normal achieving peers when confronted with reading failure. Forty-five third grade students from a suburban elementary schools were participants in the study. Thirty of the subjects were classified as having a learning disability (LD) and the remaining 15 subjects were from regular education (RE) classrooms. Fifteen of the students with LD were placed in the treatment group and the remaining fifteen were placed in the control group. All the regular education students were placed in the treatment group. After randomly assigning the students with LD into either a treatment (stressed) group or a control (nonstressed) group, the stressed students were administered a reading instrument in order to measure how they dealt with failure. A one-way ANCOVA was conducted to determine whether significant differences existed between the groups based on their posttest scores. The results indicate that stressed students with LD have a significantly more difficult time recovering from stress than their regular education peers.
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