Riddick et al (1999) review relevant literature. They find that ‘… performance is impaired by high anxiety’ and specifically that ‘… working memory is particularly affected by anxiety’. Interestingly they find that:

…two trends emerge … One is that cognitive and functional difficulties persist into adult life but that the negative emotional concomitants reduce considerably once individuals have left the competitive and high literacy demands of the school environment. The other is that adults in higher education, because they are still in a competitive and high-literacy-demand situation, still report a number of negative feelings. (ibid.p.232).

Johnston (1985 p. 167) writes that ‘… the effect of anxiety in reading difficulty cannot be over-estimated, although its circular causal properties are difficult to demonstrate.’ He suggests, in this rich and fascinating paper, that faced with a task where failure is possible there are two distinct personal goals which may conflict. The apparently primary goal may be to complete the task or solve the problem. However, another, and possibly much more fundamental, goal may rather be ‘… to protect or enhance one’s ego.’ (ibid. p. 172). Arnold (1999 p. 12-13) quotes Canfield & Wells describing the ‘poker chip’ theory of learning thus:

The student who has had a good deal of success in the past will be likely to risk success again; if he should fail his self-concept can ‘afford it’. A student with a history predominated by failure will be reluctant to risk failure again. His depleted self-concept cannot afford it…

Arnold writes (1995 p.12) that ‘self-esteem is especially significant in young children and has been shown to predict … reading ability better than IQ.’ It is, at least in my opinion, reasonable to doubt whether adults are very much less susceptible than are children to the corrosive effects of reduced self-esteem and consequent anxiety. As Judy Wallis notes: ‘… if you walk into any ABE class you will find people oppressed by feelings of powerlessness, dependency and low self-esteem.’ (in Mace 1995 p.61)

Johnston (1985 p. 168) claims that initial failure easily to acquire literacy may cause ‘… a very severe form of anxiety’ and that there may, as a result, be ‘… a general avoidance of print detail and a shutting down of processing under stress’ which ‘could produce a condition of almost literal word blindness’ (ibid. p. 169 and remember Frank Smith’s tunnel vision condition), but that ‘… while anxiety seems very important, at least as important are the causes to which these individuals attribute their failure.’ Johnston describes such attribution as causing ‘helpless’ and ‘passive’ behaviour, such behaviour being ‘… probably the most detrimental to learning.’ Chan (1994) says that:

The issue of motivation is particularly critical for students with learning difficulties because of the learned helplessness problem associated with repeated failures … these students are unlikely to try alternative ways of solving a problem when encountering difficulties … believing there is nothing they themselves can do in such situations. (1994 p. 320) (her emphasis).

In 1996 Chan also refers to ‘… maladaptive attributional beliefs … leading to feelings of helplessness’ and ‘… maladaptive behaviour.’ Peterson et al (1993 p. 252) state simply that ‘Helpless children are those who attribute failure to their lack of ability … reading difficulties entail learned helplessness.’

Here we are, then, thrown inevitably up onto the stony shores of learned helplessness. What do I mean by this? My description of learned helplessness, for present purposes, is as follows: Learned helplessness is an unconsciously mediated mental state characterised to a greater or lesser degree by some or all of the following: reduced confidence and self-esteem, impoverished performance, diminished expectation, lowered motivation, dampened curiosity, lack of engagement, weak persistence and passivity. In the educational context it may be induced by maladaptive attributions. (Bar-Tal 1984, Butkowsky & Willows 1980, Peterson et al 1993.) Maladaptive attributions are a strikingly obvious phenomenon among ABE students, who regularly attribute their poor literacy performance to personal and innate failings such as, for example, stupidity, and to these personal defects only. They attribute failure to their irremediable inability or inabilities - lack of intelligence commonly, or a mental disability such as ‘dyslexia’. Such attributions are, of course, helpful neither to learning nor to performance. However, the situation, at least in my opinion, is rather worse than this; it is slowly becoming clear that maladaptive attributions and their attendant learned helplessness are more than just unhelpful; they may actually be disabling.