Leslie R. Brody

The metacognitions questionnaire for children: Development and validation in a clinical sample of children and adolescents with anxiety disorders

A self-report measure of metacognition for both children and adolescents (ages 7-17) (Metacognitions Questionnaire for Children; MCQ-C) was adapted from a previous measure, the MCQ-A (Metacognitions Questionnaire for Adolescents) and was administered to a sample of 78 children and adolescents with clinical anxiety disorders and 20 non-clinical youth. The metacognitive processes included were (1) positive beliefs about worry (positive meta-worry); (2) negative beliefs about worry (negative meta-worry); (3) superstitious, punishment and responsibility beliefs (SPR beliefs) and (4) cognitive monitoring (awareness of ones own thoughts). The MCQ-C demonstrated good internal-consistency reliability, as well as concurrent and criterion validity, and four valid factors. In line with predictions, negative meta-worry was significantly associated with self-reports of internalizing symptoms (excessive worry and depression). Age-based differences on the MCQ-C were found for only one subscale, with adolescents reporting greater awareness of their thoughts than children. Adolescent girls scored higher on the total index of metacognitive processes than adolescent boys. Overall, these results provide preliminary support for the use of the MCQ-C with a broader age range as well as an association between metacognitive processes and anxiety symptomatology in both children and adolescents, with implications for cognitive behavioral interventions with anxious youth.

Gender Differences in Anger and Fear as a Function of Situational Context.

Gender differences in the reported intensity of anger and fear toward hypothetical males and females were explored in three age groups (6–12 year olds, 14–16 year olds, and adults over 30) located in two different geographic areas. The samples were primarily Caucasian and included a wide range of socioeconomic groups. Subjects reported on the intensity of feelings elicited by characters in an emotion story task in which three aspects of situational context were varied: the gender of the story characters eliciting the feeling (all situations), the stereotypic gender-typed or cross-gender behavior of the eliciting character (four situations), and the affective quality of the situations (four situations). Across all three age groups, situations that were frightening, anger-provoking, or that depicted stereotypic male-negative behavior elicited the most consistent subject gender and character gender differences in reported fear and anger. Relative to males, females of all ages reported more fear in frightening, anger-producing, and male-negative stereotypic situations. Males were reported to be more frightening and anger-producing than were females in those same situations. The data also suggested that with development, females reported less intense fear of females, while males reported less intense fear of males.

Gender, Emotion, and Socialization

The discussion of gender differences in emotional processes is complex for two reasons. First, there are multiple processes involved in emotional functioning, including verbal, facial, and behavioral expressiveness; emotional experiences and awareness; the ability to recognize or decode emotions in others; physiological arousal; and the ability to regulate emotional experiences and expressions. Gender differences have been documented for some, but not all of these processes. Further, gender differences in many of these processes have been found to be inconsistent across personality, social, cultural, and situational variables, as well as task characteristics and the quality and intensity of specific emotions such as anger and happiness. This lack of consistency in gender differences is not surprising, considering the fact that emotions serve adaptive communicative and motivational functions. For example, expressing anger is functional in that it communicates, both to oneself as well as to others, that goals are not being met. It is also motivational in that it facilitates change on both interpersonal and intrapersonal levels. Because women and men are often socialized to have different roles, motives, goals, and self-schemas (caretaking roles, intimacy motives, and interdependent self-schemas for women; provider roles, control motives, and independent self-schemas for men; Cross & Madsen, 1997), gender differences should occur in emotional processes. However, gender differences should also fail to generalize broadly because motives and goals for individual women and men vary with the social context. Moreover, both women and men need to adapt to power and status imbalances between the two genders, in which men typically have higher power and status than do women (see Brody, 1999). Higher power is theoretically associated with emotions such as pride, guilt, and anger, whereas lower power is associated with emotions such as fear and shame. Recent research has supported some of these ideas (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), and indicates that power differentials, both in general as well in specific circumstances, may contribute to gender differences in emotional expressiveness. Gender differences also vary across contexts because both women and men have multiple identities that consist not only of gender, but also of such factors as age, social class, race, ethnicity, status, religion, sexual orientation, and professional and interpersonal roles (e.g., professor and parent) (Stewart & McDermott, 2004). These identities may interact and become more or less salient depending on the individuals’ values; the social setting, including the content and goals of the situation (e.g., political versus personal; Ethier & Deaux, 1994); and the multiple identities of the

Developmental changes in children's abilities to match and label emotionally laden situations

In two studies, male and female preschoolers and third- and fourth-graders were tested on their abilities to match and generate affective labels for 19 types of emotionally laden situations. Age changes were found in the accuracy with which situations were both labeled and matched; the ability to match similar situations was more strongly related to age than was the ability to label emotions. Matching and labeling abilities were positively related to each other. Both age groups were best at labeling situations depicting happiness, anger, and sadness, and at matching situations depicting sadness, anger, and disgust, but both age groups were capable of matching a wide variety of emotions depicted in situations at a better than chance rate. Only situations depicting fear, nervousness, and embarrassment were not matched better than chance by either preschoolers or third- and fourth-graders.

Neonatal habituation and dishabituation of head turning to rattle sounds

Habituation and dishabituation of localized head turning to rattle sounds were ex- amined in 28 full-term neonates who were 77.5 hours old, using a counterbalanced between groups design. There were two phases: a Pre-Habituation-Habituation Phase in which localized head turning and habituation were established to criteria, and a Dishabituation Phase in which a changed stimulus was introduced to an experimental group. A control group received the original stimulus through- out. All infants in both groups displayed clear orienting to the sound source fol- lowed by habituation to the repeated rattle sounds. Neonates in the experimental group displayed recovery of localized head turning to the changed rattle sound relative to neonates in the control group. The use of a between groups control, counterbalancing procedures and rattle sounds establish clearly that localized head turning will habituate and dishabituate. This procedure provides a useful method for examining both memory formation and localization of sound in neonates.

Gender, gender role identity, and children's reported feelings toward the same and opposite sex

The present study explored the relative importance of gender role identity, gender role attitudes, and biological gender in determining the intensity of anger, disgust, hurt, envy, fear, pity, and liking reported toward same- and opposite-sex children. Sixty male and 60 female 6–12-year-old children reported on the intensity of emotions that a hypothetical child would experience toward same- and opposite-sex children in various situations. The Childrens Personal Attitudes Questionnaire, the Childrens Attitudes toward Women Scale, and a self-reported toy preference measure were used to assess gender role identity and attitudes. The results indicated that girls were more angry at males than at females, and that both sexes tended to be more hurt and disgusted by opposite-sex than by same-sex children. Girls also tended to report more fear than did boys, and both sexes tended to report more fear of males than of females. Most importantly, gender role identity and attitudes accounted for more of the variance in predicting the quality of reported emotions than did biological gender. Biological gender predicted to only one feeling: pity toward males, after the variance accounted for by the gender role traits was removed. In general, both boys and girls who scored highly on feminine gender role identity were both communal and vulnerable in their reported emotions (high in reported liking, fear, and hurt). Childrens reported feelings toward the same- and opposite-sex children seemed to be based on the evaluation of whether other childrens biological gender differed from the childrens own gender role identity characteristics.

Habituation-Dishabituation to Speech in the Neonate.

Harvard UniversityA counterbalanced between-groups design with repeated measures was used todemonstrate that both male and female neonates would habituate and dishabituateto repeated and novel speech sounds. Twenty-four full-term newborns with a birthweight greater than 2,400 grams and a mean age of 72.2 hours served as subjectsin a head-turning sound-localization task. The results clearly indicated the reliableoccurrence of two basic processes in the neonate: spatial orientation to soundsand response decrement to repeated speech sounds followed by response incrementto novel speech sounds.

Mindfulness and experiential avoidance as predictors and outcomes of the narrative emotional disclosure task

This randomized study examined whether narrative emotional disclosure improves mindfulness, experiential avoidance, and mental health, and how baseline levels of and changes in mindfulness and experiential avoidance relate to mental health. Participants (N=233) wrote repeated traumatic (experimental condition) or unemotional daily events narratives (control condition). Regression analyses showed neither condition nor gender effects on mental health or experiential avoidance at a 1-month follow-up, although the control condition significantly increased in one component of mindfulness. Decreased experiential avoidance (across conditions) and increased mindfulness (in the experimental condition) significantly predicted improved mental health. Narrative disclosure thus did not improve outcomes measured here. However, increasing mindfulness when writing narratives with traumatic content, and decreasing experiential avoidance regardless of writing content, was associated with improved mental health.

Are there specific metacognitive processes associated with anxiety disorders in youth

While Wells’ metacognitive model of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) posits that certain metacognitive processes, such as negative meta-worry (negative beliefs about worry), are more strongly associated with symptoms of GAD than other anxiety disorders in adults, research has yet to determine whether the same pattern is true for younger individuals. We examined the relationship between several metacognitive processes and anxiety disorder diagnostic status in a sample of 98 youth aged 7–17 years. Twenty youth with GAD were compared with similarly sized groups of youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD, n = 18), social phobia (SOC, n = 20), separation anxiety disorder (SAD, n = 20), and healthy controls who were not patients (NONP, n = 20) using a self-report measure of metacognition adapted for use with young people in this age range (Metacognitions Questionnaire for Children). Contrary to expectations, only one specific metacognitive process was significantly associated with an anxiety disorder diagnosis, in that the controls endorsed a greater degree of cognitive monitoring (self-reported awareness of one’s thoughts) than those with SAD. In addition, there was a trend indicating that nonpatients scored higher than youth with GAD on this scale. These surprising results suggest potentially differing patterns in the relationships between symptoms and metacognitive awareness in anxious youth, depending on the type of anxiety disorder presentation.

Ego development, self-perception, and self-complexity in adolescence: a study of female psychiatric inpatients.

A study of two groups of female psychiatric inpatients, differing in level of ego development, explored domains of self-perception that best predicted global self-worth and symptom clusters that best predicted second-order factors of self perception. Findings revealed quantitative and qualitative differences in self-complexities, and more positive self-perceptions among the higher ego-level group in scholastic competence, job competence, and behavioral conduct. Results are discussed from a developmental perspective.