Parents' and Children's Cognitive Style: The Role of Parents' Practices

Hope as a Predictor of Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms Following Pediatric Cancer Diagnosis

Objective

To examine hope and its components of agency and pathways as predictors of anxiety and depressive symptoms in children receiving cancer treatment.

Methods

Sixty patients (mean standard deviation age = 13.3 (2.7); 57% male) completed Snyder's Hope Scales, the Children's Depression Inventory, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory at diagnosis and 3 month intervals for 1 year following pediatric cancer diagnosis. Parents also completed Snyder's Hope Scales. Linear mixed-effect regression was used to assess hope's role in longitudinal models of symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Results

Agency was a significant predictor of between-patient differences and within-patient changes in symptoms of depression and anxiety. Neither patient pathways nor either component of parent hope was predictive of symptoms of depression or anxiety. Patients who were more likely to have depressive symptoms at baseline were older, diagnosed with leukemia, and non-Hispanic White as opposed to Hispanic. Patient demographics were not predictive of anxiety.

Conclusions

Patient agency is a potential target for intervention to prevent or reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms following pediatric cancer diagnosis.

The effect of content and tone of maternal evaluative feedback on self-cognitions and affect in young children

Feedback that young children receive from others can affect their emotions and emerging self-views. The current experiment tested the effect of negative content (criticism) and negative tone (hostile) of the feedback on children's affect, self-evaluations, and attributions. We also explored whether maternal history of depression and children's temperament moderated these relations. Participants were 152 mothers and children (48% girls) aged 4 and 5 years (M = 61.6 months, SD = 6.83). The task involved three scenarios enacted by dolls; a child doll made something (e.g., picture, house, numbers) that had a mistake (e.g., no windows on the house) and proudly showed it to the mother doll, who then gave feedback (standardized, audio recorded) to the child. Children were randomized to one of four maternal feedback conditions: negative or neutral content in either a negative or neutral tone. Negative content (criticism) produced significantly more negative affect and lower self-evaluations than neutral content. When the tone of the feedback was hostile, children of mothers who had been depressed during the children's lifetimes were significantly more likely to make internal attributions for mistakes than children of nondepressed mothers. In addition, among children with low temperamental negative affectivity, in the presence of negative tone, negative content significantly predicted more internal attributions for the errors. Findings are discussed in terms of understanding the role of evaluative feedback in children's emerging social cognitions and affect.