Cognitive Vulnerability and Stress for Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Children and Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

The present study investigated Beck’s cognitive diathesis-stress theory (1967, 1987) for the prediction of emotional and behavioral problems in childhood. The study included 218 participants aged 10 to 16 years (M = 12.38, SD = 1.16) who underwent two evaluations with an interval of 8.4 months between them. In the first evaluation, sample was divided according to the participants’ cognitive vulnerability (vulnerable, moderate, resilient) and in the second, by their experience of stressful events in recent months (low risk, moderate risk, high risk). The groups were compared by variation in the intensity of the symptoms over time. Results showed that high-risk cognitively vulnerable children had increased externalizing symptoms and children with moderate and high cognitive vulnerability had increased internalizing symptoms at Time 2. These results suggest the importance of considering dysfunctional cognitions and the existence of a certain level of stressful events for the development of psychopathology in childhood.