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Helpless children show marked performance decrements under failure, whereas mastery-oriented children often show enhanced performance. Current theories emphasize differences in the nature of the attributions following failure as determinants of response to failure. Two studies with 130 5th-grade children explored helpless vs mastery-oriented differences in the nature, timing, and relative frequency of a variety of achievement-related cognitions by continuously monitoring verbalizations following failure. Results reveal that helpless children made the expected attributions for failure to lack of ability; mastery-oriented children made surprisingly few attributions but instead engaged in self-monitoring and self-instructions. That is, helpless children focused on the cause of failure, whereas the mastery-oriented children focused on remedies for failure. These differences were accompanied by striking differences in …