Assessing Attitudes to Reading: What Can Teachers Do?

Most children begin school expecting to learn to read. If this expectation is not met, if they have problems with reading, they may develop a dislike for reading, or just a hopeless feeling about it. The reading problem and the poor attitude to it aggravate each other, and this can lead to the child developing a poor opinion of himself and poor attitudes to school work generally.
We cannot ignore the defeatist and negative attitudes of the ... student when we deal with his reading needs. To ignore these attitudes is to court failure. To recognise them and try to change them is to pave the way toward a more successful learning experience.
How can we take attitudes into account when we are trying to help a child who had a reading problem? What has research to say about the relationships between attitudes and reading?