A specifically oriented instrument was used to partially replicate a study by Dietz (1988) in an effort to compare the utility of the phi coefficient and Rescorla index measures of perceived contingency of reinforcement in children and examine the relationship of these measures to locus of control, teacher ratings of helplessness and academic performance.

The problem of assessment and diagnosis of depression in the elderly begins with the definition of depression being indefinite. In this study, the theory of learned helplessness was chosen because of its value in organizing research within a learning theory framework. The Beck Depression Inventory, measures of fluid and crystallized intellectual ability, locus of control, and attribution of success and failure were chosen as variables for an exploratory factor analysis. The purpose of selecting these variables was to assess the cognitive, motivational, and affective components of learned helplessness as they affected the responses of elderly subjects to depression items. Self report measures of income, education, and health, were included to assess the relationship of these variables to depression. A somatic factor was predicted to correlate with an affective factor of depression.

To test predictions of learned helplessness theory and attribution theory, depressed and nondepressed subjects were exposed to a word-association task in a skill, chance, or no-instructional-set condition. Subjects were asked to make attributions of success and failure to four factors--ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck--and rate expectancy of success. The predictions of both theories were only partially confirmed. Difficulties relating to the experimental design may account for the failure of nondepressed/skill subjects to show greater expectancy change. As predicted, all subjects in the chance condition displayed similar expectancy changes. Also as predicted, nondepressed subjects did not rate effort as being the least influential factor. Depressed subjects, however, rated all factors equivalently, instead of rating effort least influential.

This research demonstrates that experience with uncontrollable reinforcement, here defined as continuous non-contingent positive feedback to solution attempts of insoluble problems, fails to produce the proactive interference phenomenon, learned helplessness, while uncontrollable aversive events, here defined as negative feedback to solution attempts of insoluble problems, produces that phenomenon. These results partially support the "learned helplessness" hypothesis of Seligman (1975) which predicts that experience with uncontrollable reinforcement, the offset of negative events or the onset of positive ones, results in learning that responding is independent of reinforcement and that learning transfers to subsequent situations. This research further demonstrates that experience with controllability, here defined as solubility, results in enhanced competence.

In order to aid in the understanding of the personality components that contribute to the symptoms of depression, the learning process of persons labeled as depressed was examined. Twenty female subjects who were either receiving or being evaluated for psychotherapy participated in this study. Based on MMPI and DACL scores, 10 depressed and 10 nondepressed subjects were placed in avoidance learning situations. An active avoidance situation required making the correct button press to avoid a sounding buzzer; the absence of the button-pressing response constituted a passive avoidance situation, There was no significant difference between the two groups in learning across avoidance conditions, Depressives were found 'to be less persistent in responding than were nondepressives. Results were explained as supporting a learned helplessness model of depression.

The present research has focused on an often-neglected segment of society—the aged. A number of phenomena which appear relevant to a study of aging have been discussed and the pertinent literature reviewed. Specifically, learned helplessness, depression, internal-external locus of control, and disengagement versus activity have been examined. The present research was divided into two studies. Study Number 1 has investigated internal-external locus of control in an elderly sample and related it to indices of activity and morale. Study Number 2 has extended Seligman's (1975) theory of learned helplessness to an elderly population and investigated the phenomenon in individuals with either an internal or an external locus of control. The locus of control construct (Rotter, 1966) and the theory of learned helplessness (Seligman, 1975) appear to have immediate relevance for the treatment of aging individuals. The present study suggests that exposure to controllable reinforcement may break-up or alleviate learned helplessness in elderly individuals.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-96). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2009. / Thesis directed by Julia M. Braungart-Rieker for the Department of Psychology. "April 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-69).

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2006. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.89-92).

This study was designed to compare the effects of exposure to two different sets of soluble discrimination problems, an easy set composed of only two- and three-dimensional problems and a more difficult set composed of problems ranging from two to seven dimensions, both immediately after training and at a 10-day posttreatment follow-up. The subjects were 32 depressed male inmates of a federal correctional institution. It was hypothesized that as a result of meeting and mastering progressively more difficult problems, the group given progressively more difficult problems would show a greater reduction in depression and a greater enhancement of performance on a variety of cognitive measures, both immediately after treatment and at the 10-day posttreatment follow-up. The results failed to support these hypotheses. Depression scores decreased significantly from pretreatment to posttreatment, but did so equally for the two groups. One of the cognitive measures, the WAIS Digit-Symbol subtest, showed significant improvements from pretreatment to posttreatment, but did equally for the two groups. Significant relationships were found between the subjects' performances on the cognitive tasks, and measures of their tendencies to attribute successes and failures to stable or unstable factors. Unexpected significant positive relationships were found between depression and performance on the cognitive tasks. The differential effect of the prison environment upon people differing in their intelligence was discussed as a possible explanation of these findings.