The development and influence of subjective experiences on children's thinking: Implications for cognitive-behavioral therapy.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Cognitive-behavioral therapies are based on the assumption that how one thinks about life experiences has significance for one's well-being and that changing faulty thoughts can be done by assigning new interpretations to these life experiences. Although the focus of cognitive-behavioral therapy is on changing the content of faulty thinking, an emerging literature proposes that the experience of bringing that content to mind is also important for judgments of well-being. When the task of restructuring thoughts about life events is experienced as difficult, the new interpretation given to the life event might be contrary to what was hoped for in therapy.
Currently, a number of studies suggest that cognitive-behavioral therapies can be helpful in treating some childhood mental health problems, but, there is little research exploring how children's experiences during thinking influence the interpretations they make during cognitive-behavioral activities. This dissertation is aimed at exploring whether children experience difficulty in recalling many instances from memory and whether the subjective experience of this difficulty influences children's judgments on topics similar to topics raised in cognitive-behavioral therapy.
In a between-subjects design, one hundred ninety-eight Kindergarten and second-grade children recalled either few or many instances of social (times I was shy, times I was friendly, times others were nice to me, times others were mean to me) and non-social (books) behaviors and subsequently made judgments of difficulty, liking, frequency, and interest. Children were asked to recall a few (easy task) or many (difficult task) examples of each behavior, with the specific numbers of examples differing by age. Thus, Kindergarten children were asked to recall 1 (easy) or 5 (difficult) examples while second-grade children were asked to recall 3 (easy) or 8 (difficult) examples. Confirming the hypothesis that recalling many examples would be a difficult task, Kindergarten boys reported greater difficulty in recalling 5 examples of times that others had been mean to them than a few examples and greater difficulty in recalling many examples of times they were friendly than a few examples. As posited by Schwarz's fluency model, their subsequent judgments were influenced by this experienced difficulty rather than the content brought to mind in the examples. Kindergarten boys who recalled many times they were friendly reported that they liked being friendly less than boys in the few condition. These findings did not replicate in second-grade; second-grade children did not consistently report greater difficulty in recalling many (8) examples over a few (3), or in using the experience of difficulty in their subsequent judgments. It is possible that the examples or cut points were not developmentally appropriate. Further work remains to be done on exploring the developmental aspects of when children experience difficulty in recalling examples and when they are influenced by subjective experiences.
This study suggests that by Kindergarten children have the capacity to use the subjective experience of thinking when constructing judgments. There are some relevant implications for cognitive-behavioral therapy. Practitioners need to know that the cognitive process of restructuring faulty interpretations of one's life experiences can have significant consequences for therapeutic progress. Even young children can use the subjective experience of ease and difficulty in their judgments and this may influence how events are restructured. Specifically, subjective experience of recalling many instances from memory may influence children's judgments in ways that may lead children to infer the opposite of what is intended in therapy.