Those who are high in achievement motivation make mastery-oriented attributions,
crediting their successes to ability—a characteristic they can improve through trying hard
and can count on when faced with new challenges. This incremental view of ability—that it
can increase through effort—influences the way mastery-oriented children interpret negative
events. They attribute failure to factors that can be changed or
controlled, such as insufficient effort or a difficult task (Heyman & Dweck, 1998). Whether these children succeed or fail,
they take an industrious, persistent approach to learning.
In contrast, children who develop learned helplessness
attribute their failures, not their successes, to ability. When
they succeed, they are likely to conclude that external
events, such as luck, are responsible. Unlike their masteryoriented counterparts, they hold an entity view of ability—
that it cannot be improved by trying hard (Cain & Dweck,
1995)
An inter vention called attribution retraining encourages learnedhelpless children to believe that they can overcome failure by exerting more
effort. Children are given tasks difficult enough that they will experience some
failure, followed by repeated feedback that helps them revise their attributions:
“You can do it if you try harder.” After they succeed, children receive additional
feedback—“You’re really good at this”; “You really tried hard on that one”—so
that they attribute their success to both ability and effort, not chance.
praise the efforts,scaffold, reward,provide opportunities to succeed,help them persist,acknowledge efforts, improvements as well as success.