The Cognitive Vulnerable Variables Of Depression In Seventh Grade Children : A Follow-up Study And Implications For Education

From the angle of developmental psychology,concerned with the mood symptoms of depression for early children, the paper analyzes and discusses its occurrence , development characteristics and the influence factor- characteristic cognitive vulnerable variable, providing a new idea for the study of the prevention or intervention for young children's depression.Objective: (1) examining the predictive effect of negative cognitive styles( CCSQ and CASQ) on the depressive symptoms; (2) examining whether there is the significant interactions between negative cognitive style and stressful life events, and their predictive effect on the changes of depression; (3) exploring the predictive effect of characteristic cognitive vulnerable factors (negative attribution, results-oriented cognition and self-directed awareness, etc.) on the Grade 7 students' depression.Methods: The survey questionnaires used are all translated into Chinese from English original questionnaires by researchers, and then back translated by a foreign dual linguists and be corrected. Sampled from a middle school in Xiangtan City, all subjects are voluntary for the test and sign the informed consent before testing. There are 335 initial testing questionnaires and then get back 319 valid ones. A follow-up assessment is conducted every 3 months after the fist survey and total for 4 times. The survey questionnaires used are Child Depression Inventory (CDI), Children's Hassles Scale (CHAS), Children's Cognitive Style Questionnaire (CCSQ) and Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ).Finally, use hierarchical liner model to analyze the tracking data, so as to get the depressive cognitive vulnerable factors and explore their predictive effect on depression.Results: (1) The depressive baseline level of the Grade 7 students (namely first depressive symptoms) has a significant positive correlation with the stressful life events, results-oriented cognition, self-directed awareness and negative attribution(p<0.01);and there is significant positive correlation among the stressful life events, results-oriented cognition, self-directed awareness and negative attribution (p <0.01). (2)After the hierarchical liner model statistical analysis, we find that on the condition of controlling the ender factor, the main effect of negative cognitive styles (negative attribution, result oriented cognitive and self-directed awareness) is significant in predicting depression for Grade 7 students, but the interaction between negative cognitive styles and stress level is not significant.Conclusion: (1) Individual cognitive style is the predictive factor of depressive symptoms, namely the individual who holding a negative cognitive style (high depression quality) show more depressive symptoms after having experienced the stressful life events. (2)The results-oriented cognition in the process of the negative cognitive reasoning can predict the individual depression; (3) The self-directed cognition in the process of the negative cognitive reasoning has forecast effect on the depressive symptoms;(4)Through the research and analysis for the depressive symptoms of Grade 7 students who are in the transitional period from late child to adolescence, we can conclude that the characteristic cognitive vulnerable factor has three different types, that is, negative attribution, results-oriented cognition and self-directed cognition.