The objectives of this study was to examine the relationship betweenacademic achievement and achievement motivation,and to investigatecausual attributions of success and failure by success-oriented and failure-oriented children. Two hundred and twenty two fifth and sixth gradechildren were drawn from 610 pupils in an elementary school in Taipei. Interms of scores on achievement motivation and test anxiety scale, the subjectswere classified into success-oriented (67 males and 46 females) andfailure-oriented (48 males and 61 females) groups. They were administeredboth attributional scale for success and failure and intelligence test,exceptthat the scores of school achievement were copied down from the schoolrecord.The data obtained were analyzed by two-way analysis of covarianceusing IQ scores as covariate. The major results obtained were: (1) The pupils of success-orientedgroup had a higher academic achievement than the pupils of failure-oriented group. (2) The pupils of success-oriented group tended to attributetheir success to ability and effort. (3) The pupils of failure-oriented grouptended to attribute their failure to luck. The interpretations of these resultsare provided.