COGNITIVE SELF-REGULATION IN YOUTH WITH AND WITHOUT LEARNING DISABILITIES: ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY, THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE, LEARNING VS. PERFORMANCE GOAL PREFERENCES, AND EFFORT ATTRIBUTIONS

This study examined whether youth with learning disabilities reported more maladaptive cognitive self-regulatory characteristics known to influence learning motivation and performance. Specifically, 1,518 sixth- through twelfth-graders from two separate rural school districts with and without learning disabilities completed measures of academic self-efficacy, theories of intelligence, academic goal preferences, and attributions for exerting effort in academic contexts. We found that students with a learning disability were more likely to possess low academic self-efficacy, to believe that intelligence was fixed and nonmalleable, to prefer performance over learning goals, and to interpret the exertion of effort as meaning they possessed limited levels of ability. Theories of intelligence and academic self-efficacy were also found to influence goal preferences and ability attributions. Finally, mediational findings provided strong support for the notion that differences in goal preferences and effort attributions between youth with and without LD were largely due to the fact that youth with LD possessed greater entity views of intelligence and lower academic self-efficacy. Our findings add to existing studies that support Dweck's (1999) model and suggest that interventions for learning disabilities ought to target a broader range of cognitive self-regulatory processes.