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Article Excerpt
Academic difficulties are an important facet of children's experience. In fact, children report that receiving poor grades and encountering problems with homework are among the most common distressing events in their daily lives (Compas, Malcarne, & Fondacaro, 1988; Greene, 1988; Lewis, Siegel, & Lewis, 1984; Mantzicopoulos, 1997; Schulenberg, Asp, & Petersen, 1984). Children differ in their responses to these academic difficulties. As early as preschool--and increasingly as children move through elementary school--some children begin to develop maladaptive learned helpless responses to failure (Burhans & Dweck, 1995). When challenged, these children tend to evaluate themselves negatively, blame their failures on a lack of ability, report diminished expectations for future success, and show decreased persistence. In contrast, children exhibiting mastery-oriented approaches to challenge tend to attribute their failures to factors within their control (e.g., insufficient effort), maintain positive expectations for future success, and persist in the face of failure (Diener & Dweck, 1978; Dweck, 1986; Dweck, 2002; Kamins & Dweck, 1999; Ziegert, Kistner, Castro, & Robertson, 2001).
Considerable research has sought to examine the precursors of learned helpless responses to failure. Much of this work has focused on examining how children's interactions with adults influence children's coping styles (Wigfield, Eccles, Schiefele, Roeser, & Davis-Kean, 2006). This work indicates that the types of praise and criticism children receive from adults following failure predict children's responses to academic challenge (e.g., Kamins & Dweck, 1999). The effects of other types of social interactions--including the provision of help and emotional support--have been less well studied. In one notable exception, Hokoda and Fincham (1995) used sequential analysis techniques to study the ways in which mothers of learned helpless third-grade children responded as their children worked on a series of difficult experimental tasks. Compared with mothers of more mastery-oriented children, mothers of learned helpless children were less likely to offer assistance when their children requested it but more likely to respond to self-critical statements (e.g., "I can't do it") by suggesting that their children discontinue the activity.
Given that children spend a substantial amount of time with friends (Larson & Richards, 1991; Medrich, Rosen, Rubin, & Buckley, 1982) and report seeking the advice and support of friends during times of stress (Band & Weisz, 1988; Causey & Dubow, 1992; Patterson & McCubbin, 1987), it seems likely that children's responses to academic failure might also be predicted by the interactions in which they and their friends engage. Surprisingly, however, very little attention has been paid to the nature of children's interactions with friends following achievement-related failure or the role that these interactions might play in predicting changes in children's responses to failure.
The purpose of the present study was to begin to fill this gap in the literature. Fourth- through sixth-grade children's conversations with friends were observed immediately after children experienced an achievement-related failure. Statements made by both focal children and their friends (e.g., instances of off-task talk, negative self-evaluations, help seeking, and help giving) were used to predict changes in children's responses to failure from postfailure to postdiscussion. The gender of the friendship dyad and the relative performance of children's friends were examined as potentially important moderating variables.
The Development of Achievement Motivation in Peer Contexts
The current study contributes to a still small, but growing, literature indicating that interactions with friends play an important role in the development of children's school-related attitudes and outcomes (for reviews, see Altermatt & Kenney-Benson, 2006; Berndt, 1999; Wigfield et al., 2006). Children who select friends who do well in school, who are actively involved in classroom activities, and who hold positive achievement-related beliefs tend to adopt similar characteristics over time (Altermatt & Pomerantz, 2003; Berndt & Keefe, 1995; Ide, Parkerson, Haertel, & Walberg, 1981; Kindermann, 1993; Ryan, 2001). Moreover, children who are involved in relationships characterized by high levels of positive friendship qualities (e.g., intimacy and social support) experience stronger classroom engagement and academic performance (Berndt & Keefe, 1995; Cauce, 1986; Kurdek & Sinclair, 1988) than children who are involved in lower quality relationships.
The processes by which children's achievement attitudes and outcomes are shaped by interactions with friends are less well understood. Although researchers have identified a number of potentially important mechanisms (e.g., reinforcement, social comparison, and help giving), rarely have these processes been directly observed in achievement settings or empirically linked to changes in children's achievement-related behaviors and beliefs over time (for reviews, see Berndt, 1999; Ryan, 2000; Wentzel, 1999). Berndt and his colleagues (Berndt, Laychak, & Park, 1990) have conducted one of the few studies to examine the mechanisms of friends' influence in the achievement domain directly, using quasi-experimental observational methods. In that study, eighth-grade students were presented with hypothetical dilemmas in which they had to make a decision that reflected either a high level of achievement motivation (e.g., studying for an examination) or a low level of achievement motivation (e.g., going to a rock concert instead). Children made their decisions both before and after talking with a friend. Consistent with the notion that reinforcement is an important mechanism of influence, adolescents were most likely to shift toward high-motivation alternatives when friends supported these alternatives in their conversations.
The present study extends the work of Berndt and his colleagues by directly observing children's conversations with friends immediately after children experience an achievement-related failure to examine the nature of these interactions and their relation to changes in children's responses to failure from postfailure to postdiscussion. Directly observing children's interactions with friends in the context of achievement-related failure is important in at least three respects. First, children's responses to failure have been broadly implicated in a variety of models of achievement motivation (for a review, see Wigfield et al., 2006) and are thought to play a key role in predicting children's long-term educational and occupational choices (Dweck, 1986). Second, although positive and negative feedback from adults has been clearly linked to the development and maintenance of learned helpless responses to failure, the degree to which other features of children's social interactions--particularly their social interactions with equal-status peers--are related to learned helpless responses to failure are not well understood (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wolfson, Mumme, & Guskin, 1995; Wigfield et al., 2006). Finally, peer influence has most often been assessed indirectly, using survey methodologies (Berndt et al., 1990). By examining children's interactions with friends in the context of achievement-related failure, we are able to directly observe a number of mechanisms of peer influence (e.g., help giving, social comparison) that have been identified in several recent reviews of the literature as potentially important contributors to the development of children's achievement-related behaviors and beliefs (for reviews, see Berndt, 1999; Ryan, 2000; Wentzel, 1999).
Gender and Relative Performance as Moderating Variables
Evidence for gender difference in learned helpless responses is mixed, with some studies reporting gender differences (e.g., Dweck & Bush, 1976; Dweck, Goetz, & Strauss, 1980; Dweck & Repucci, 1973; Nicholls, 1975) and others reporting no gender differences (e.g., Kamins & Dweck, 1999; Ziegert et al., 2001). When studies do find gender differences, the usual pattern is that girls are more likely than boys to exhibit maladaptive learned helpless responses to failure (Ziegert et al., 2001; Wigfield et al., 2006). These gender differences have been linked in part to students' interactions with important adult figures in their lives. For example, Dweck, Davidson, Nelson, and Enna (1978) found that boys and girls receive different types of feedback in the classroom setting and that the types of feedback received by girls (e.g., criticism focused on intellectual inadequacies) predicts the negative attribution style (i.e., blaming failure on ability) characteristic of learned helplessness.
The current study extends this work by examining the degree to which boys' and girls' conversations with friends differ and the degree to which these conversations might contribute to gender differences in learned helplessness. Prior research suggests that girls' interactions with friends are more likely than boys' interactions to be characterized by high levels of help, validation, and caring (e.g., Berndt, Hawkins, & Hoyle, 1986; Berndt & Keefe, 1995; Brendgen, Markiewicz, Doyle, & Bukowski, 2001; Parker & Asher, 1993; for a review, see Rose and Rudolph, 2006). Much of this research is based on children's self-reports, however, and it remains unclear to what degree these gender differences will be apparent in observations of actual conversations between friends, especially in the context of an achievement-related failure. Assuming that gender differences do emerge, it still remains unclear what the consequences might be for children's responses to failure. For example, some research indicates that the social support-seeking characteristic of girls' interactions during times of stress may heighten rather than reduce anxiety (Altermatt, 2007; Costanza, Derlega, & Winstead, 1988; Harlow & Cantor, 1994; Rose, 2002; Rose, Carlson, and Waller, 2007).
The current study also examines the ways in which relative performance may influence the nature and consequences of children's conversations with friends following failure. There is clear evidence that children use social comparison information to evaluate their competencies and to guide their behavior (Ruble, Boggiano, Feldman, & Loebl, 1980). As a result, we expect children and friends to communicate differently when both children experience failure than when one child experiences failure and the other succeeds. For example, we expect children to seek more help when friends succeed than when friends fail, as children are more likely to expect help seeking to be effective when a friend has successfully completed the task (see Ryan, Pintrich, & Midgley, 2001). It remains unclear whether the consequences of help seeking (or other features of children's conversations) will vary according to friends' performance. On the one hand, one might expect help seeking to lead to better outcomes (i.e., fewer learned helpless responses) when friends succeed than when friends fail, as successful friends can indeed provide more effective help and model positive achievement beliefs (e.g., high expectations for future success). On the other hand, one might expect help seeking to predict fewer learned helpless responses when a friend also experiences challenge, as friends can work together to find a solution without the negative self-evaluative consequences that upward social comparison might bring. Indeed, prior research indicates that a key reason for the avoidance of help seeking is the fear that others will view one as incompetent (Ryan et al., 2001).
Overview
The overall purpose of present study is, then, to examine the role that fourth- through sixth-grade children's interactions with friends play in predicting maladaptive learned helpless responses to failure in an achievement setting. The specific goals of this study are threefold. First, the research provides novel information regarding the nature of children's conversations with friends as children cope with a specific achievement-related challenge. Second, the research examines both focal child and friend statements as potentially important predictors of changes in children's responses to failure from postfailure to postdiscussion. Third, the research examines whether the nature of friends' discourse or its relation to changes in children's responses to failure varies by the gender of the dyad or by relative performance of its members.
In coding children's conversations, we focused our attention on two general categories of statements. First, we coded the frequency with which children and their friends made off-task statements, that is, statements that were not task relevant (e.g., "What are you wearing to school tomorrow?"). We expected that when off-task talk was prevalent in friends' conversations, children would report increasingly more learned helpless responses to failure. This finding would be consistent with evidence from the coping literature that suggests that problem-focused, engaged coping strategies (including help seeking) generally predict better adjustment than emotion-focused, disengaged coping strategies (including cognitive avoidance) (Compas et...
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