Content area
Abstract
Success and failure are important influences on children's motivation and task performance. A theoretical perspective which provides a detailed cognitive model for these effects is attribution theory. It was predicted that the effects of failure, operationalized as achievement history, sex differences, grade level, task attempted, and perspective could be measured by early elementary school children's use of attributions for failure. Further, it was predicted that the association among motivation-related cognitions described in attribution theory would be true for young children. Results indicate that the effect of academic failure on children's motivation-related cognitions may involve other factors. Low-achieving boys had stated expectancies and attributions for failure on a novel academic task that were consistent with predictions. This was not true for a novel non-academic task nor was it true for girls. The predicted relationship among the motivation-related variables of attributions and expectancy change were found to be significant; however, other predicted relationships were not. The educational implications of these findings are discussed.