Emotional and motivational co-occurrences correlated to SLD in childhood and adolescence. Explanatory hypotheses: The self-efficacy theory and the learned helplessness theory

Andrea Novelli, Joyce Oddo

International scientific literature has always devoted little space to the description — based on evidence — of the psychological distress that occurs in individuals with specific learning disorders. However, there is a recent scientific publication that has dealt with these aspects, emphasising the need to identify and manage dyslexia in childhood and adolescence. The review written by Mugnaini, Chelazzi and Romagnoli (2008), has well summarised the great amount of studies carried out in this direction, even if it has not come to a conclusive interpretation of how these discomforts could arise and then evolve. We propose some explanatory hypotheses based on two classical cognitive constructs: Seligman’s learned helplessness (1990) and Bandura’s perceived self-efficacy (1997b).

Keywords
SLD, dyslexia, learned helplessness, self-efficacy, anxiety, depression.

Back