Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts and Cognitive Functioning in Kindergarten and Young Elementary School-Age Children Following Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, 183 five- to eight-year-old children were surveyed about their own intrusive thoughts and tested on their level of cognitive functioning (knowledge about the mind and the mind's operations). Basic developmental research suggests that children who lack sufficient knowledge about the mind should have difficulties answering questions about intrusive thoughts. Hurricane-affected children reported relatively more intrusive thoughts with negative content than nonaffected children reported. An association between children's level of understanding of the mind and their ability to report on their own intrusive thoughts supports this hypothesis. Results point to a funneling of intrusive thoughts toward negative content following a traumatic event and highlight the importance of considering children's level of understanding of the mind when investigating intrusive thoughts in young children.

Financial support for this study from the National Science Foundation (NSF BSC–0603674) is gratefully acknowledged. I am also grateful to Cecile D. Burge, Vice President of Research and Economic Development at the University of Southern Mississippi, for providing computer and video-recording equipment required for this study. Some of the research presented in this article was presented at the 2007 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (Symposium 1–026 “Dysfunctional Thoughts and Feelings Following Hurricane Katrina”).

I thank Stacy Overstreet, Carl Weems, Paul Harris, Richard McNally, and three anonymous reviewers for their excellent and most helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Further, I acknowledge the help of my research assistants Lindsay Chustz, Deirdre Yeater, Angie Kim, Shu-Ju Yang, and Diane Compton. I am also most grateful for Angie Kim's editorial assistance as a native English speaker. Last but not least, I thank all the children and their parents who participated in this research, as well as the principals and staff of the participating schools.

Notes

¹Multiple imputation is a simulation-based approach to the statistical analysis of incomplete data. In multiple imputation, each missing datum is replaced by m > 1 simulated values. The resulting m versions of the complete data can then be analyzed by standard complete-data methods (see Schafer, 1997).

^a N = 95.

^b N = 50.

^c N = 38.

^a n = 38.

^b n = 49.

^c n = 54.

^d n = 42.

^e n = 59.

^f n = 36.

^g n = 50.

²I am most grateful to Paul Harris for his advice on the creation of questions to assess children's own intrusive thoughts.

∗p < .05.

³Critical values that correspond to an alpha of .05 are±1.96, or to an alpha of .01 they are±2.58.

∗p < .05.

⁴I am grateful to Mark Freeston for suggesting the potential relevance of this line of research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Manuel Sprung

Manuel Sprung is now Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Austria.