Attributing academic success to giftedness and its impact on academic achievement: The mediating role of self-regulated learning and negative learning emotions

As a causal attribution, attributing academic success to giftedness might influence students’ academic achievement. According to previous studies, students’ self-regulated learning and negative learning emotions may mediate the association between achievement attribution and academic achievement. Therefore, the present study employed structural equation modeling to examine the association between attributing academic success to giftedness and academic achievement among elementary and secondary students, and included students’ negative learning emotions and self-regulated learning as mediators. The 2018 data from China Family Panel Studies were included in the present study for analysis. Results showed that the full mediation models had satisfactory model fits. After controlling the effects of the covariates, attributing academic success to giftedness had a positive indirect association with their academic achievement, through the mediation of self-regulated learning and negative learning emotions. Based on these findings, possible explanations and suggestions for practices and future research are discussed.