Reinforcement schedules,effort vs. Ability attributions,and persistence

Two treatment studies of special education students markedly helpless with regard to arithmetic are reported. The first experiment compared an attribution retraining (Dweck, 1975) treatment to a control treatment matched to it in schedule of successes and failures. Both the attribution retraining and control treatments proved effective in alleviating helplessness, but they were not differentially effective. The second experiment compared the effects of three success-failure schedules (100% success, 76.9% success, and 46.2% success) on attributions and persistence. Only the 76.9% success schedule increased attributions of failures to lack of effort and improved behavioral persistence in the face of failure. The results were interpreted as supporting one aspect of Weiner's (1979) theory, which implies that an infrequently experienced event, i.e., failure, will be attributed to an unstable cause, i.e., lack of effort.