Research on irrelevance,helplessness, and immunization against helplessness in Spain: Past,present, and future

The main contribution to helplessness research in Spain was on immunization against helplessness and how it was modulated by predictability in animals or attributions in humans. Recent research have focused on factors determining the perception of non-contingency during learned irrelevance and the illusion of control during an uncontrollable experience. Its subsequent effects on covariation learning and the detection of controllability showed the influence of prior beliefs and attentional factors on covariation learning and learned helplessness whose influence should be integrated into current new learning models. This research was supported by a Spanish DGICYT (Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica) grant (PB94-0801).