Research indicates that students with learning disabilities are likely to be at greater risk for experiencing negative affect than their higher achieving counterparts. The purpose of this article is to review recent research on the effects of affect on thoughts, cognition, and behavior. This research finds that induced positive affect leads to more accurate performance on math, greater learning of new vocabulary, and better performance on a new learning task. Implications of and suggestions for follow-up studies of negative and positive affect in students with learning disabilities are presented.
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