Self-Narratives and Psychopathology in Early Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Self-narration is the universal experience of talking to oneself mentally. Self-narration occurs across a variety of contexts, and helps individuals function and regulate themselves more adaptively, notably during negative emotional challenges such as frustration. Although maladaptive emotion-related self-narration is a key etiological factor of broad psychopathology, almost nothing is known about the early development of this skill and its connection to emerging psychopathology. This study aimed to examine the association between different types of emotion-related self-narrations and early symptoms of psychopathology. Forty-five children (Mage = 4.69 years, SD = 0.73) completed a computer game designed to elicit positive and negative reactions on a touchscreen computer (Grabell et al., 2019), followed by an emotion-related self-narration cartoon game. During the emotion-related self-narration cartoon game, children were shown a cartoon of a child in a frustrating situation (negative cartoon), and a cartoon of a child in a calm/pleasant situation (positive cartoon). Each cartoon had a thought bubble, and children were prompted to generate emotion-related self-narrations for the character in their own words. Participants were given two minutes to provide emotion-related self-narrations. The self-narrations were coded and placed into categories depending on whether the child said an emotional narration (“the boy is sad”) vs. a non-emotional narration (“the boy is standing”) and whether the child generated complete responses (i.e., mentioned a subject and verb/action, “the girl likes playing games”) or fragmented responses (“very upset”). Inter-rater reliability was good (κ = 0.97). Parents rated their child’s irritability and behavior problems using the Multidimensional Assessment Profile for Disruptive Behavior (MAP-DB) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Paired-samples t-tests revealed significant differences in the total number of emotional narratives said for the negative vs. positive cartoon (t(44) = 2.576, p = .013), such that children expressed more emotional narratives in the negative cartoon than the positive cartoon. There was also a significant difference for the total number of non-emotional narratives expressed for the negative vs. positive cartoons (t(44) = -2.03, p = 0.48) , such that children expressed more non-emotional narratives in the positive cartoon than in the negative cartoon. No significant differences were found for the total number of fragmented emotional narratives said for both cartoons (t(44) = .125, p > .05). Bivariate correlations revealed that the total number of emotional narratives expressed during the positive cartoon were significantly and negatively correlated with irritability (r(43) = -.36, p = .02) and externalizing problem scores (r(43) = -.33, p = .03) such that children who produced more emotional narratives had lower symptom levels than peers. Fragmented emotional narrations expressed during the positive cartoon was significantly and positively correlated with irritability scores (r(43) = .31, p = .04) such that children who produced more fragmented emotional narrations had higher irritability scores than peers. The present study utilizes a novel coding strategy and developmentally appropriate task to examine emotion-related self-narrations in early childhood. These findings suggest that mature vs. nascent emotion-related self-narrations can be assessed in very young children and may have clinical utility in identifying risk for psychopathology.

Authors

• Katie Gonzalez, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Adam Grabell, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Non-Presenting Author