Social Information Processing in Children: Specific Relations to Anxiety, Depression, and Affect

Abstract

Two studies examined shared and unique relations of social information processing (SIP) to youth's anxious and depressive symptoms. Whether SIP added unique variance over and above trait affect in predicting internalizing symptoms was also examined. In Study 1, 215 youth (ages 8–13) completed symptom measures of anxiety and depression and a vignette-based interview measure of SIP. Anxiety and depression were each related to a more negative information-processing style. Only depression was uniquely related to a less positive information processing style. In Study 2, 127 youth (ages 10–13) completed measures of anxiety, depression, SIP, and trait affect. SIP's relations to internalizing symptoms were replicated. Over and above negative affect, negative SIP predicted both anxiety and depression. Low positive SIP added variance over and above positive affect in predicting only depression. Finally, SIP functioning partially mediated the relations of affect to internalizing symptoms.

This work was supported by a University of Missouri Research Board Grant awarded to the second author. We thank the children and their families who participated in this study and the research assistants who helped with data collection.

Notes

Note. Correlations for Study 1 are above the diagonal, with means and standard deviations to the right. Correlations for Study 2 are below the diagonal, with means and standard deviations below. Values in bold are significantly different from zero (p < .05). SIP = Social Information Processing; NIPS = Negative Information Processing Style; PIPS = Positive Information Processing Style; PRES = Positive Response Evaluation Style; CDI = Children's Depression Inventory; STAIC-T = State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children–Trait Form.

^a N = 215.

^b Because adjustments in the response format were made to improve psychometric properties for some Children's Evaluation of Everyday Social Encounters items, direct comparisons between scale scores in Study 1 and Study 2 are not possible.

^c N = 127.

Note. SIP = Social Information Processing; NIPS = Negative Information Processing Style; PRES = Positive Response Evaluation Style.

∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .01. ∗∗∗p < .001.

¹Because our anxiety and depression measures contain items assessing cognitive symptoms of the disorders, there is the potential for inflated relations with SIP. To address this possibility, we reran primary analyses after removing cognitive items from the CDI (Items, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 24, and 25; see Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 1986) and STAIC–T (Items 1, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 20). Patterns of results were nearly identical to analyses with full measures suggesting that associations were not solely based on the overlap between SIP and the cognitive aspects of anxiety and depression. The only difference between results obtained with the full and modified (cognitive items deleted) CDI and STAIC–T was that for Study 1, when income was controlled, PRES was no longer related to the modified CDI scores (β = −.11. t = −1.71, p = .09). Full analyses are available upon request from the first author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron M. Luebbe

Aaron Luebbe is now at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Maureen A. Allwood

Maureen Allwood is now at the Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Lance P. Swenson

Lance Swenson is now at the Department of Psychology, Suffolk University.