Abstract
M.A.(Clinical Psychology)
Recently the concept of depression in children has been receiving much
attention, in contrast to the previous decade when children were generally
regarded as being incapable of experiencing depression.
This study was conducted in an attempt to ascertain whether depressed
children exhibited a depressogenic attributional style as predicted
by the Reformulated Learned Helplessness Model of Depression (Abramson,
Seligman & Teasdale, 1978), and whether these children's attributional
style matched those of either of their parents. Furthermore, the childrearing
practices of the parents were investigated in order to establish
whether parental attributional style was transferred to children
through a particular child-rearing style.
The Children's Depression Inventory (Kovacs & Beck, 1977) was used to
screen 166 privata school pupils, and an experimental and control group
of 10 pupils each was formed on the basis of criterion scores. The KASTAN
(Kaslow, Tannenbaum & Seligman, 1978) was the instrument employed to
assess the attributional style of the children. Both mothers and fathers
of the experimental and control groups were required, separately, to
complete the Attributional Style Questionnaire (Peterson, Semmel, Abramson,
Seligman & von Baeyer, 1978), which assesses adult attributional style and
the Child-Rearing Practices Questionnaire (Dielman, Catell, Lepper &
Rhoades, 1971).
Data obtained from the investigation were subjected to t-tests, and
Pearson product-moment correlation co-efficients were calculated to
determine any significant differences and associations, respectively,
between variables.
The results of the study did not substantiate the hypotheses. It was
suggested that perhaps the initial screening instrument, the Children's
Depression Inventory, differentiated children with a general emotional
disturbance, rather than depression per se, and that children develop
attributional styles independently of their parents' style and childrearing
practices. It was suggested that the development of an attributional
style in children was related to their own experiential world.