Cvencek Dario, Greenwald Anthony G, McLaughlin Katie A, Meltzoff Andrew N
Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2020 Dec;200:104962. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104962. Epub 2020 Aug 14.
This longitudinal study examined early social-cognitive markers that might be associated with the emergence of childhood depression and anxiety. At 5 years of age, 137 children completed an implicit self-esteem measure. At 9 years of age, the same children completed measures of implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Two novel findings emerged. First, higher implicit self-esteem at age 5 than explicit self-esteem at age 9 (implicit > explicit discrepancy) was associated with depressive symptoms at age 9, but not with symptoms of anxiety. Second, this cross-age implicit > explicit discrepancy was associated with depressive symptoms more strongly than was the same implicit > explicit discrepancy measured concurrently at age 9. The overall pattern suggests that the appearance of depressive symptoms in children is associated with discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem and not just lower levels of implicit self-esteem or lower levels of explicit self-esteem taken alone. It is the direction and discrepancy across time that is particularly informative, such that discrepancies between early implicit representations and later explicit reports of self-worth reflect a developmental pathway associated with elevated risk for depressive symptoms. Taken altogether, this study illustrates the benefits of combining work in developmental, child-clinical, and social psychology to provide a more complete view of the developing child. We believe that combining implicit and explicit measures of self-esteem across developmental time points can be used to examine early markers of depression in children at younger ages than typically possible with explicit measures alone.
这项纵向研究考察了可能与儿童期抑郁和焦虑的出现相关的早期社会认知指标。5岁时，137名儿童完成了一项内隐自尊测量。9岁时，同样这些儿童完成了内隐自尊、外显自尊、抑郁和焦虑的测量。出现了两个新发现。第一，5岁时较高的内隐自尊高于9岁时的外显自尊（内隐>外显差异）与9岁时的抑郁症状相关，但与焦虑症状无关。第二，这种跨年龄的内隐>外显差异与抑郁症状的关联比9岁时同时测量的相同内隐>外显差异更强。总体模式表明，儿童抑郁症状的出现与内隐自尊和外显自尊之间的差异有关，而不仅仅是单独的较低水平的内隐自尊或较低水平的外显自尊。特别有意义的是跨时间的方向和差异，即早期内隐表征与后期自我价值的外显报告之间的差异反映了一条与抑郁症状风险升高相关的发展路径。总体而言，这项研究说明了结合发展心理学、儿童临床心理学和社会心理学的工作以更全面地了解儿童发展的益处。我们认为，在不同发展时间点结合内隐和外显自尊测量可用于在比仅使用外显测量通常可能的年龄更小的时候检查儿童抑郁的早期指标。
