The Relationship Among Attributional Style, Mentalization, and Five Anxiety Phenotypes in School-Age Children

ABSTRACT

Literature has shown the importance of social cognition for emotional wellness. However, to our knowledge, few studies so far investigated the relationship between social cognition and anxiety in childhood. No study systematically examined social cognition in relation to specific domains of anxiety. By a correlational design and multivariate models, we explored in a sample of 337 children the association between five anxiety phenotypes and two social cognition domains (Mentalization/Attributional style). After controlling for depressive symptoms, we found that a good performance in the mentalization task was predicted by high levels of generalized anxiety and low levels of separation anxiety. Moreover, positive attributions for good events were predicted by low levels of social anxiety. The present findings remark the importance of rehabilitating social cognition skills in children with social/separation anxiety and depressive symptoms.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• attributional style
• depressive symptoms
• mentalization
• social cognition
• theory of mind

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge professor Kaslow for permission to translate CASQ-R and Raffaella Belotti for her help in translating the Italian version of the questionnaire. We thank all children, parents and teachers who took part in this study.

Contributorships

SS and MC conceived the study, participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript; AO performed the statistical analysis and helped in drafting the manuscript; AO participated in the design of the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.