Examining Child Verbalizations as Predictors of Risk for Early Childhood Depression

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Assessing children’s cognitive styles is a way to examine risk for depression. Negative cognitive styles are related to risk for depression in older children and adults (Jacobs et al., 2008; Joormann & Arditte, 2015). However, few studies have examined negative cognitive styles in early childhood. One developmentally appropriate way to assess cognitive styles in preschool-aged children is to examine their verbalizations (Leppert et al., 2019). The present study assessed the quality of children’s verbalizations in relation to known risk factors for depression: parental depression, parental anxiety, and child anger and sadness. It was hypothesized that more negative (e.g., self-doubt, helplessness) and fewer positive (e.g., confidence, hopefulness) child verbalizations would be associated with parental depressive symptoms, parental anxiety symptoms, parent-rated child anger and sadness, and experimenter-rated child negative mood. Participants included 124 3-5-year-old children (M = 3.7 years, SD = 0.7) and their parents (99.2% mothers); 62.1% of participants identified as White, 17.7% as Hispanic, 12.9% as more than one race/ethnicity, 3.2% as Asian, 2.4% as African American, and 1.6% as other. Children’s negative, positive, and assistance-seeking verbalizations were coded in a videotaped stress-inducing laboratory task (from the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery; Lab-TAB) in which they were given a set of non-working keys and instructed to unlock a transparent box that contained a desired toy. Parents reported about their own depressive (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale [CES-D]) and anxiety (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Anxiety Scale [PROMIS-A]) symptoms. To assess parent-reported child anger and sadness, parents completed the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ). Experimenters rated children’s negative mood (anger and sadness) based on children’s behavior across ten Lab-TAB tasks. We computed correlations among study variables. Parent-rated child anger and experimenter-rated child negative mood were significantly related to children’s receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4 [PPVT]), so these analyses included receptive vocabulary as a covariate; age was negatively correlated with assistance-seeking child verbalizations and included as a covariate in these analyses as well. Negative child self-verbalizations were significantly positively correlated with parental depression (r = .23, p = .011) and experimenter-rated child negative mood (r =.40, p <.001). Positive child self-verbalizations were significantly negatively correlated with parental depression (r = -.22, p = .015). Assistance-seeking (e.g., helplessness) child verbalizations were significantly positively correlated with parent-rated child sadness (r = .18, p = .044). Assistance-seeking child verbalizations were significantly positively correlated with experimenter-rated child negative mood (r = .19, p = .042) when adjusting for receptive vocabulary; when adding age as a covariate, this association was no longer significant (r = .12, p =.186). Our findings suggest that a developmentally appropriate stress-inducing task can be used to assess cognitive styles in preschool-aged children that are associated with risk for depression.

Authors

• Amanda Gale Dowdy, California State University San Marcos
  Presenting Author

• Morgan Morrison, California State University San Marcos
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lea Rose Dougherty, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sara Bufferd, University of Louisville
  Non-Presenting Author