Measuring the effects of failure with learning disabled children.

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 less than .05) poorer than stressed normals on a reading posttest. Learning disabled children 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.