ACADEMIC FAILURE AND LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

• Autor(a) principal: Nobre de Andrade Nunes, Angela
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Psicologia (Universidade de Brasília. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/revistaptp/article/view/17090

This study had the purpose to assess the relationshipbetween school failure, learned helplessness and depression in childrenfrom low income families. Learned helplessness was assessed byidentifyng the subjects' attributional pattern for failure. These werecategorized into three causal dimensions: locus (internal or external),constancy (stable or unstable) and cross-situational generality (global orspecific). Learned helplessness was defined as an attribution for failurethat was internal, stable and global. Causal attributions were emitted by the subjects in semi-structured interviews. Jn order to assess thepresence of depressive symptons, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)was administered soon after the interview. The sample was composed of60 2rd and 3rd grade, public school children from low income families.Their ages ranged from 8 to 13. The subjects were previously classifiedinto two comparison groups according to their school performance asfollows: satisfactory performance SP (30 students with successivepromotions in school) and unsatisfactory performance UP (30 studentswith two or more retentions in the grade). The results revealed a significantrelationship between school failure and learned helplessness as well asbetween these two variables and depressive symptons. The qualitativeanalysis of the results showed, among other things, a strong associationbetween school failure and the children's feelings of impotence towardsthe external events that confront them.