Cognitive Organization, Perceptions of Parenting and Depression Symptoms in Early Adolescence

Abstract

Despite its strong relation to depression and theorized development across childhood and adolescence, cognitive schema organization has not been explored in early adolescence, a sensitive developmental period for first depression onset. Schema organization is theorized to derive from childhood cognitive internalizations of caregiving relationships, such as critical parenting experiences (e.g., Young et al. in Schema therapy: a practitioner's guide. Guilford Press, New York, 2003). Thus, the current investigation considers the organization of positive and negative schemas with youth's perceptions of parental warmth and psychological control and self-reported emotional functioning. Participants were 198 boys and girls aged 9-14 years who completed the Psychological Distance Scaling Task, measures of perceptions of parenting behaviors, anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms. Consistent with hypotheses, higher depression, but not anxiety symptoms were associated with a loosely-interconnected positive schema organization and a tightlyinterconnected negative schema organization. Parental responsiveness emerged as the strongest predictor of negative schema structure. Implications for cognitive-developmental theories of depression and early identification of depression risk are discussed.

Cognitive schemas as longitudinal predictors of self-reported adolescent depressive symptoms and resilience

“…Similar to research findings with adults, there are two studies that examine cognitive organization in adolescence, and both suggest that similar to adult research, there are identifiable schematic organization differences between depressed and non-depressed adolescents (Dozois, Eichstedt, Collins, Phoenix, & Harris, 2012;Lumley, Dozois, Hennig, & Marsh, 2011). More specifically, this research suggests that elevated depression symptoms in early adolescence (Lumley et al, 2011) or a diagnosis of MDD ) is associated with tightly interconnected negative schema organization and loosely interconnected positive schema organization.…”

“…Adequate reliability and validity have been established for this measure in adult samples (Dozois & Dobson, 2001a;2001b;), and more recently in an early adolescent sample of 200 youth (Lumley et al, 2011).…”

“…Previous research suggests that depressotypic cognitive organization is evident by early adolescence (Lumley et al, 2011). However, given the importance of identity formation and exploration during adolescence (Brinthaupt & Lipka, 2002), schemas may not be stable during this developmental stage.…”

“…While research among youth has demonstrated that schema content prospectively predicts the development of depression (e.g., Hankin, Lakdawalla, Lee, Grace, & Roesch, 2004), and schema organization has been shown to predict depressive symptoms in youth in cross-sectional studies Lumley et al, 2011), no research to date has examined the stability of schema organization among youth nor has research examined schema organization as a prospective predictor of depressive symptoms and resilience among youth. In addition, research findings on schema content and organization from research conducted with adults may not be generalizable to youth; therefore the current study may help to address these gaps and may enhance the understanding of depression in its early adolescent stages, a time when many individuals experience their first depression symptoms or disorder.…”

“…The interconnectivity of positive and negative schemas on the PDST (PSO and NSO) was determined by applying 21 logarithmic transformations to the data, as previous research using the PDST has done (e.g., Lumley et al, 2011). In addition, there was one identified female outlier who scored over three standard deviations higher on the measure of depressive symptoms at Time 2 than the other adolescents in the sample.…”