D.Litt. et Phil. (Psychology) / Please refer to dull text to view abstract

M.A. (Clinical Psychology) / This study was conducted to ascertain whether the mothers of children with psychoneurological learning disabilities were more depressed, helpless due to a particular attributional style, and had a lower self-concept, than the mothers of children with anxiety disorders. The Beck Depression Inventory, (Beck, Ward, Mendelson & Erbaugh, 1961), the Attributional Style Questionnaire (Abramson, Seligman &Teasdale, 1978), and the Tennessee Self Concept Scale (Fitts, 1965) were completed by the mothers of 20 boys with psychoneurological learning .disabilities and the mothers of 20 boys with anxiety disorders, aged 6-12 years. Significant results were obtained contrary to expectations, in that the mothers of children with anxiety disorders, were in fact more depressed, helpless and had a lower self-concept than the mothers of children with psycho- neurological disabilities. The conclusion was drawn that the nature of the psychopathology did not depend as much on one factor such as a specific learning disability or an anxiety disorder, but was rather a manifestation of the functioning of the family system. Further research seems indicated to investigate the strengths and vulnerabilities in the family system as a whole, in terms of the reciprocal influence of the learning disabled child and his family...

To test the hypothesis that a discrepancy between expectation and experience with regard to the controllability of outcomes would produce the greatest effect on later task behavior, 70 undergraduate volunteers were directed individually in a multiphase experiment. The first phase was designed to induce expectations of control or lack of control over outcomes. The second phase was designed to confirm or not to confirm the expectations induced. The third phase tested for the effects on later task behavior. The results indicated that the first phase procedure failed to induce the required expectancies, thus preventing a test of the experimental hypothesis. Possible procedural changes were discussed.

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Mothers' susceptibility to the effects of learned helplessness as a function of the perception of her own infants' temperament and exposure to varying degrees of control over infant crying was explored. Seventysix mothers were classified as having a difficult or easy infant based upon ratings of their infant on the Infant Characteristics Questionnaire. Using an adaptation of the learned helplessness paradigm, a relatively equal number of mothers from each group were exposed to an escape, inescape, or control pretreatment condition and subsequently tested on a solvable shuttle box task. Mothers of easy infants who were pretreated with inescapable crying demonstrated more failures and trials to criterion than mothers of easy infants in the escape and control conditions. In contrast, mothers of difficult infants did not demonstrate performance differences across the 3 pretreatment conditions. Mothers of difficult infants performed significantly better on the shuttle box task than mothers of easy infants following exposure to uncontrollable crying. Mothers of difficult and easy infants did not differ on measures of depression, perceptions of control over adult-child interactions, and potential for child abuse. Mothers did not respond more rapidly to the cries produced by unfamiliar difficult or easy infants. Findings suggest mothers of difficult infants may initially be less adept at terminating infant crying, but are more resilient to these failure experiences. Indeed, mothers of difficult infants responded more effectively following exposure to uncontrollable infant cry sounds. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of mothers' perceptions of their different caregiving experiences in mediating their responsivity to salient infant cues. / Ph. D.

To determine if learned helplessness results from lack of control over negative events or simply the number of negative events experienced, 60 university students were assigned to one of five treatments: controllable low negative, uncontrollable low negative, controllable high negative, uncontrollable high negative, and no treatment. Backward digit and letter span tasks served as test tasks. The generally nonsignificant results were discussed as possibly due to a procedural error. Further research on this question is needed.

While the learned helplessness effect has been reliably found in dogs and other species (e.g., cats, mice, fish, and humans), it has been somewhat difficult to obtain in rats. In addition, it has been demonstrated that electroconvulsive shock (ECS) reverses learned helplessness in dogs, but ECS induced reversal has not been demonstrated in the rat. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was twofold: (1) to determine if the learned helplessness effect could be reliably demonstrated in rats; and (2) if so, will a single ECS attenuate this phenomenon. If it could be shown that ECS attenuates helplessness, then two purposes would be served: (a) it would extend the generality of learned helplessness theory by indicating additional parallels between dog helplessness and rat helplessness; and (b) it would expand the parallels between learned helplessness and human depression, thereby increasing the validity of the learned helplessness model of depression. In Experiment 1, rats were randomly assigned to one of three groups: escape, yoked-inescapable, and no shock control. Each rat in the escape group received 80 trials of unsignaled escapable shock. The escape group rats were required to perform a progressive fixed-ratio bar press to escape shock. The yoked-inescapable group received exactly the same intensity, frequency, and duration of shock its escape partner received; but no response would escape shock. The no-shock control group received only pre-exposure to the training apparatus. The following day all rats were tested on a FR-2 shuttlebox escape/avoidance task. After test, half the rats in each group were given a single ECS and then were retested 24 hours later in the shuttlebox. The learned helplessness effect was clearly demonstrated during the test phase. In addition, a single ECS attenuated the learned helplessness effect in rats. In Experiment 2 rats were given training exactly as described in Experiment 1. Following training, one-third of the rats in the escape and yoked-inescapable groups were given a single ECS immediately, one-third were given a single ECS 23.5 hours later, and one-third received no treatment. In the no-shock control group one-third of the rats were given a single ECS 24 hours prior to test, one-third of the rats were given ECS 30 minutes prior to test, and one-third of the rats were not given ECS. Then, all rats were tested 24 hours following training. The test session was identical to the test session in Experiment 1. The learned helplessness effect was clearly demonstrated during test in the NO-ECS condition. In addition, it was demonstrated that ECS attenuates or reverses learned helplessness training when given immediately following training. Delayed ECS also reverses helplessness, but less dramatically than immediate ECS. In both experiments the criteria which characterize learned helplessness were matched: (1) Failure to initiate the escape response in the presence of shock; (2) failure to maintain escape behavior even after occasional escape response occur; and (3) that conditions 1 and 2 above are a result of inescapability and not a result of shock per se. In addition, since ECS attenuates helplessness, the generality of helplessness theory was extended to rats, and the validity of learned helplessness model of depression was strengthened. / Doctor of Philosophy

The present study was designed to test two theories which conceptualize performance deficits and negative mood associated with depression. Reformulated learned helplessness theory suggests that the expectation of uncontrollable outcomes is sufficient to result in performance deficits and depressed mood. On the other hand, self-efficacy theory proposes that while the expectation of uncontrollability is important, the individual's perception of self-efficacy determines when performance deficits and depressed mood will occur. In the present study, both self-response (efficacy) and response-outcome expectancies were manipulated and performance, mood, and self-esteem were measured. Ninety undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups or a no-treatment comparison group. Group 1: Low self-response/high response-outcome expectancy Group 2: Low self-response/low response-outcome expectancy Group 3: High self-response/high response-outcome expectancy Group 4: High self-response/low response-outcome expectancy Group 5: No-Treatment Comparison Hard or easy math problems manipulated self-response expectancy. Graphs and cards indicating high or low percentages of peer solution of math problems manipulated response-outcome expectancy. While the data suggested that the manipulations were effective, performance was enhanced, not diminished. Further, no subjects scored in the depressed range. Finally, there were no significant differences in self-esteem between groups. Failure to find the expected differences are discussed in terms of the facilitation effects found. In conclusion, support was found for Roth's (1980) reconceptualization of learned helplessness theory which relates facilitation effects to the amount of exposure to helplessness training. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of practical application and future research. / Master of Science

To investigate the impact of helplessness-induction on cognitive performance in the aged, 66 community-residing elderly persons (X=72.5 years) were administered a word association task, disguised as a test of onterpersonal empathy, under a) response independent (RI), b) response dependent (RD) reinforcement, o c) control conditions. The subjects were categorized as either depressed or non-depressed. Three (treatments) by two (levels of depression) by two measurements (pre- vs. post-treatment) ANOVA's were performed on scores from both short term memory and intelligence measures. These suggested that the more depressed elderly demonstrated greater helplessness-induced short term memory deficits, and to a lesser extent, fluid intellectual deficits.