Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

1986, Vol. 54, No. 4,528-536

Copyright 1986 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

0022-006X/86/S00.73

Negative Cognitive Errors in Children: Questionnaire Development,

Normative Data, and Comparisons Between Children With and Without
Self-Reported Symptoms of Depression, Low Self-Esteem,
and Evaluation Anxiety

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Harold Leitenberg, Leonard W. \bst, and Marilyn Carroll-Wilson

University of Vermont
A self-report questionnaire entitled the "Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire"
(CNCEQ) was constructed to measure in children four types of negative cognitive errors derived from
Beck's cognitive theory of adult depression: (a) overgeneralized predictions of negative outcomes;
(b) catastrophizing the consequences of negative events; (c) incorrectly taking personal responsibility
for negative outcomes; and (d) selectively attending to negative features of an event. Results from an
administration of this questionnaire to a normative sample of 637 fourth-, sixth- and eighth-grade
children showed that in general these children did not endorse any of the four types of negative
thoughts to any large extent. However, three subsequent studies indicated that children with selfreported symptoms of depression, of low self-esteem, and of evaluation anxiety endorsed each type
of negative cognitive error significantly more than did their nondepressed, high self-esteem, and nonevaluation-anxious counterparts.

Beck (1967, 1976) proposed that self-deprecating and negatively biased thinking styles are not only core features of adult
depression but also may play a key role in the development and
maintenance of this disorder. In addition to the overriding negative triadnegative view of self, current circumstances, and
futureand stereotypic schemas, premises, or dysfunctional
attitudes (shoulds and musts), a central theme of Beck's cognitive model is that depressed individuals characteristically make
specific dysphoria-provoking cognitive errors, collectively referred to as distortions, in response to ambiguous or negative
life experiences. Beck, Rush, Shaw, and Emery (1979) described seven of these typical cognitive errors: overgeneralization (believing that if a negative outcome occurred in one case,
it will occur in any case that is even slightly similar); selective
abstraction (attending exclusively to negative features of a situation in the belief that only the negative features matter); assuming excessive responsibility or personal causality (seeing oneself
as responsible for all bad things, failures, and so on); presuming
temporal causality or predicting without sufficient evidence
(believing that if something bad happened in the past then it's
always going to be true); making self-references (believing oneself, especially one's bad performances, to be the center of everyone's attention); catastrophizing (always thinking of the
worst on the premise that it's most likely to happen to one); and
thinking dichotomously (seeing everything as one extreme or
another, black or white, good or bad). These cognitive errors

or distortions are interpretations and predictions that are not

usually justified by the information provided (Hammen, 1981).
Even if there is a partially realistic foundation for such interpretation and predictions in the lives of some depressed patients
(Coyne & Gotlib, 1983; Krantz, 1983), their repetitive, selfdeprecating quality, and extremely negative character can be
still considered dysfunctional or maladaptive (Kovacs & Beck,
1978).
Beck's cognitive theory of depression led to the development
of a relatively effective treatment approach for adult unipolar
depression (e.g., Rush, Beck, Kovacs, & Hollon, 1977). It has
also stimulated considerable research with adults (for a recent
review, see Coyne & Gotlib, 1983). In contrast, however, Beck's
model has received only scant research attention with children
(Kaslow & Rehm, 1983). Our overriding goal, therefore, was to
further open this line of investigation by examining Beck et al.'s
(1979) set of cognitive errors in children in a manner similar to
what has been used to investigate these errors in adults (Lefebvre, 1981). Evidence is growing that children's depressive
symptoms may have many features in common with adults' depressive symptoms (Kashani et al., 1981; Kovacs & Beck,
1977), and, of particular relevance to the present studies, parallel findings between children and adults have recently been reported for other cognitive models of depression (Kaslow, Rehm,
& Siegel, 1984; Leon, Kendall, & Garber, 1980; Seligman et al.,
1984). We expected this would be true as well for Beck's cognitive errors.
To test our hypothesis, we first developed a self-report questionnaire designed to measure Beck et al.'s (1979) negative cognitive errors in children and obtained normative data from a
relatively large sample of children in the fourth, sixth, and
eighth grades to determine (a) the extent to which these negative
cognitive errors were endorsed by children, (b) whether certain

Leonard Yost is now located at the Berkshire Medical Center, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Harold Leitenberg, Department of Psychology, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405.

528

COGNITIVE ERRORS IN CHILDREN

negative cognitive errors were endorsed more than others and
whether this varied as a function of the context of the hypotheti-

validity (the questionnaire distinguished between depressed

and nondepressed samples) and of construct validity.

cal experience (i.e., social vs. academic vs. athletic), (c) whether

Accordingly, we modeled the Children's Negative Cognitive

any sex differences existed, and (d) whether any grade level
differences existed within the limited range examined. Then us-

Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ) after Lefebvre's Adult Cognitive

Error Questionnaire. Questionnaire items were composed of 2-

ing the questionnaire, we conducted three further studies to determine if Beck et al.'s negative cognitive errors would be endorsed to different extents by children who scored high versus

to 3-line descriptions of hypothetical situations or events, followed by a statement about the event that reflected one of the
four revised cognitive errors (catastrophizing, overgeneralizing,
personalizing, and selective abstraction). Children were asked

those who scored low on depression, self-esteem, and evaluation

anxiety inventories.

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529

Study 1: Development and Normative Data on the

Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire
Development

to rate the similarity of each statement to their own thought

when they imagined being in that situation or experiencing that
event. In developing this questionnaire for children, we initially
generated 49 items that reflected different examples of each of
the four types of cognitive errors in three salient areas of a
child's lifesocial, academic, and athletic). (A fourth possible
area, family life, was intentionally omitted because of a concern

Although a number of structured self-report questionnaires

have been developed to measure various thinking styles associated with depression in adults, most notably the Attributional

that children and parents would find this too intrusive and
threatening.) Examples of some of these items follow.

Style Questionnaire (Seligman, Abramson, Semmel, & von

Your cousin calls you to ask if you would like to go on a long bike
ride. \bu think, "I probably won't be able to keep up and people
will make fun of me." (catastrophizing in the athletic area)

Baeyer, 1979), the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (Hollon

& Kendall, 1980), the Cognitive Bias Questionnaire (Hammen
& Krantz, 1976; Krantz & Hammen, 1979), the Dysfunctional
Attitude Scale (Weissman, 1979), and the Irrational Beliefs Test
(Jones, 1968), only Lefebvre (1980, 1981) devised a measure
with separate subscales for the specific cognitive errors described by Beck et al. (1979). However, when raters in the Lefebvre study initially tried to assign thoughts to Beck et al.'s seven
error categories, considerable overlap between certain errors
was discovered. Consequently, some of these errors had to be
combined, and a condensed list of four reliably discriminative
negative cognitive error categories was developed. These categories are (a) catastrophizing (anticipating that the outcome of an
experience will be catastrophic or misinterpreting an event as a
catastrophe), (b) over-generalizing (this category, which combines Beck et al.'s categories of over-generalizing and presuming
temporal causality, is denned as assuming that the outcome of
one experience will apply to the same experience or even just
slightly similar experiences in the future), (c) personalizing (this
category combines Beck et al.'s excessive responsibility and selfreference categories and is defined as taking personal responsibility for negative events or interpreting such events as having a
personal meaning), and (d) selective abstraction (this category
combines Beck et al.'s selective abstraction and dichotomous
thinking categories and is defined as selectively attending to
negative aspects of experiences).
Lefebvre (1980, 1981) used a structured questionnaire format in which hypothetical vignettes were followed by statements that reflected one of the four negative cognitive errors.
For example, Lefebvre used the vignette "\bur boss just told
you that because of a general slowdown in the industry, he has
to lay off all of the people who do your job, including you" and
the statement "you think to yourself, 'I must be doing a lousy
job or else he wouldn't have laid me off' " to measure a personalization error. Subjects were asked to rate on a 5-point scale
how similar the described thought was to the thought that they
would have in that situation. Using this format, Lefebvre reported good internal consistency and test-retest and split-half
reliabilities. There was also evidence of predictive or criterion

Last week you had a history test and forgot some of the things
you had read. Today you are having a math test and the teacher is
passing out the test. You think, "I'll probably forget what I studied
just like last week." (overgeneralizating in the academic area)
You call one of the kids in your class to talk about your math
homework. He/she says, "I can't talk to you now, my father needs
to use the phone." You think, "He/she didn't want to talk to me."
(personalizing in the social area)
You play basketball and score 5 baskets but missed two real easy
shots. After the game you think, "1 played poorly." (selective abstraction in the athletic area)
In order to consensually validate the categorization of both
the cognitive errors and the content areas of the 49 items, 10
clinical psychology graduate students were given definitions of
the four cognitive errors and the three content areas and were
asked to identify which cognitive error and which content area
was reflected in each of the 49 items. For cognitive error types,
92% agreement was reached and for content areas, 99% agreement was reached.
These 49 items were then administered to 62 students enrolled in 2 sixth- and seventh-grade classes of a local elementary
school. Responses were examined to determine which items
showed the most variation or dispersion of scores. Feedback on
ease of understanding instructions and clarity of vignettes was
also obtained from this pilot sample.
From the original 49 items, 24 were selected for the final form
of the questionnaire.1 These items had the best interrater agreement and range of scores, within the plan to have six items reflect each of the four error types and eight items reflect each of
the three content areas (i.e., two catastrophizing, two overgeneralizing, two personalizing and two selective abstraction items in
each content area).

' Copies of the questionnaire and scoring key are available from the
first author.

530

H. LEITENBERG, L. YOST, AND M. CARROLL-WILSON

Reliability and Internal Consistency

To check reliability and internal consistency of the final 24item CNCEQ, we administered the questionnaire to 143 children
enrolled in Grades 5 through 8 in a small school in Vermont,
(for girls, n = 74; for boys, n = 69both sexes were approximately evenly distributed across the four grades). Even though
the reading level of these items was between third and fourth

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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

grade (Flesch, 1948), the experimenter read aloud the instruc-

sample, for boys and for girls separately, and for the three grades
separately. In contrast with the hypothetical midpoint of 72 for
the range of 24 to 120, the mean cognitive distortion score of
this sample was only 57. Thus one can conclude that the types
of cognitions measured by the CNCEQ are not thoughts that a
general population of children commonly endorse as being like
their thoughts. As one might hope and expect, most children do
not appear to have a negatively biased and self-defeating pattern
of interpreting events.
A four-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on Type of Error X

tions and questionnaire items to minimize differential reading

skills. Children were told that there were no right or wrong an-

Content Area X Sex X Grade was conducted on the data. (Note

swers, that their answers were confidential (i.e., they would not
be shared with their teachers, parents, or friends), and that it

that because of the large number of comparisons being made in

this analysis only a p < .01 was considered statistically signifi-

was "scientifically important" for them to answer honestly. Af-

cant.) Although the difference in absolute terms was small,

ter a 4-week interval, the questionnaire was readministered.

The children rated each item on a 5-point scale from not at

there was nevertheless a significant main effect for type of error,

F(3, 1892) = 18.57, p < .001, and for content area, F(2,
1262) = 109.44, p < .001, as well as a significant Type of

all like I wotild think (1) to almost exactly like I would think
(5). A total cognitive distortion score was computed by adding
the ratings on all 24 items. Thus, the minimum possible total
cognitive distortion score was 24, and the maximum possible
total cognitive distortion score was 120.
Subscale scores for each type of cognitive error (catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, personalizing, and selective abstraction)
were obtained by adding ratings on the six items included in
each of the four error types (for each error type, minimum

Error X Content Area interaction, F(6, 3786) = 44.81, p <

.001. A Newman-Keuls analysis indicated that for the sample
as a whole, selective abstraction was endorsed most and catastrophizing was endorsed least. No significant difference existed
between overgeneralizing and personalizing. As for the breakdown of the main effect for content area, a Newman-Keuls analysis indicated a significantly higher distortion score in the social

score = 6, maximum score = 30). Similarly, subscale scores for

area than in either the academic or athletic areas (p < .01 in

both cases) and a higher distortion score in the academic area

each content area (social, academic, and athletic) were obtained

by adding the eight items included in each of these subscales (for each content area, minimum score = 8, maximum

relative to the athletic area (p < .01).

We do not wish to make too much of these differences because although they were statistically significant, their magni-

score = 40).
Test-retest reliability was determined by computing a Pear-

tude in absolute terms was nevertheless not substantial. In addition, there were relatively high intercorrelations among the four

son correlation coefficient between the scores at each testing.

types of errors (range = .49 to .56) and between the three content areas (range = .57 to .60). This caution notwithstanding,
one plausible explanation for both the higher selective abstraction score and the higher social cognitive distortion score is am-

The test-retest correlation for the total score was .65 (df= 141,
p < .001). As expected, because of the decreased number of
items involved in the calculations, the test-retest correlations
for each error type and each content area were somewhat lower
than for the total score. The range for error types was .44 to .58;
for content areas, .56 to .59. Each of these reliability coefficients

biguity: Of all the cognitive errors, the items pertaining to selective abstraction were probably the most ambiguous (after all, a
half-full glass is indeed also half-empty), and one could also ar-

was significant at the .001 level (df= 141) and can be considered
adequate for research purposes, although they are far from opti-

gue that social context is inherently more ambiguous than either academic or athletic context. The criteria for social success

mal. It is noteworthy that there was less test-retest stability in

and failure are vaguer and explicit feedback is less forthcoming

this sample of children than Lefebvre (1981) reported on his

than is the case for the academic or athletic context. Conse-

measure for adults.

Cronbach's (1951) alpha coefficient of internal consistency

quently, people usually have less of a basis for judging the quality of their past performances in social situations compared

was calculated for the total score, for each error type subscale,
and for each content area subscale. The alpha for the total score
was .89, the alphas for the four error types ranged from .60 to

with academic or athletic situations. As a result, perhaps negatively biased cognitions are more likely to be elicited in social

.71, and the alphas for the three content areas ranged from .75

ases, see Metalsky & Abramson, 1981).

The significant Type of Error X Content Area interaction was

to .82.

Normative Data

situations (for a similar argument in regard to attributional bi-

a product of several different results. First, there was no significant difference between scores for personalizing across the social, academic, and athletic areas, whereas there was a significant difference for each of the other error types across these

In order to obtain normative data, the CNCEQ was administered to 637 children in the fourth (n = 191), sixth (n = 210),

three content areas. Second, overgeneralizing and catastrophiz-

and eighth (n = 236) grades in two public schools near Rochester, New York. There were a total of 311 boys and 326 girls in

ing errors were endorsed significantly more often in the social

area than in either the academic or the athletic area and signifi-

this sample. The children were predominantly white and from

mixed socioeconomic neighborhoods.
Table 1 summarizes the responses on the CNCEQ for the total

cantly more often in the academic area than in the athletic area
(p< .001 in each case). Selective abstraction was also endorsed
significantly more often in the social area than in either of the

COGNITIVE ERRORS IN CHILDREN

531

Table 1
Normative Data for the Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire

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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Measure
Total distortion
Type of error
Catastrophizing
Overgeneralizing
Personalizing
Selective abstraction
Content area
Social
Academic
Athletic

Total
sample

Boys

Girls

Fourth
grade

Sixth
grade

Eighth
grade

57.42

57.01

57.81

60.67

55.73

56.31

13.87
14.18
14.26
15.10

13.71
13.75
14.34
15.21

14.03
14.59
14.19
15.01

15.13
14.48
15.78
15.27

13.58
13.76
13.47
14.93

13.12
14.32
13.74
15.13

20.74
18.91
17.78

20.31
19.22
17.47

21.15
18.60
18.07

21.99
20.18
18.48

19.97
18.36
17.40

20.40
18.36
17.55

Note. N= 631.

other two areas but, unlike Overgeneralizing and catastrophizing, was endorsed significantly more often in the athletic area

Study 2: Depression and Negative

Cognitive Errors in Children

than in the academic area (p < .001 in each case).

No significant main effect was found for sex on the total dis-

The purpose of this study was to determine if children who

tortion score, nor was any significant Sex X Type of Error interaction found. However, there was a significant Sex X Content

reported relatively more symptoms of childhood depression

would be more apt to endorse negative cognitive errors than

Area interaction, F(2, 1262) = 8.16, p < .001, in that girls en-

would children who reported relatively few depressive symp-

dorsed cognitive errors slightly more strongly in the social and

toms. In two recent similar comparisons, it was found that children with self-reported symptoms of depression were more
likely to express negative cognitions associated with Seligman's

athletic areas than did boys and vice versa in the academic area.
Despite the significant interaction, these differences were so
small that subsequent simple effects analyses failed to yield any
significant difference between boys and girls within the social,
academic, or athletic area.
In regard to grade level, a significant main effect was found
for the total distortion score, f\2,631) = 7.30, p < .001. A New-

reformulated learned helplessness model of adult depression

(Seligman et al., 1984) and with Rehm's self-control model of
adult depression (Kaslow et al., 1984). The same differences
were therefore expected in the case of negative cognitive errors
associated with Beck's cognitive model of adult depression.

man-Keuls analysis indicated that the younger children (fourth

graders) had a higher total distortion score than did sixth and

Subjects and Method

eighth graders (p < .01, in both cases). The sixth and eighth
graders did not differ from each other. In addition, a significant
Grade Level X Type of Error interaction was found, F(6,
1893) = 7.73, p < .001. Fourth graders endorsed catastrophizing and personalizing more often than did sixth and eighth graders (p < .01) but did not differ from sixth and eighth graders on
Overgeneralizing or selective abstraction. No significant difterence occurred between sixth and eighth graders on any type of
cognitive error, and no significant interaction was found between grade level and sex or between grade level and content
area.
That the youngest children (fourth graders) endorsed catastrophizing and personalizing cognitions more strongly than did
sixth and eighth graders makes some sense. Presumably younger children have not had quite as much experience with the
types of negative events described in the CNCEQ; thus, they
might be expected to forecast more dire consequences (catasIrophize more) than would older children who have already discovered that these sorts of negative events are not really that
big of a deal. In addition, because social perception in younger
children tends to be more egocentric (Selman, 1980), it perhaps
follows that younger children should also be somewhat more
likely to blame themselves for bad outcomes (personalizing).

The Children's Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1981), the most

commonly used self-report questionnaire for measuring depressive
symptoms in children, was used to define depressed and nondepressed
subjects in this study. The CDI consists of 27 items that cover an array
of symptoms of childhood depression including sadness, suicidal
thoughts, and sleep and appetite disturbances. It was designed for children between the ages of 8 and 13. Each item assesses one symptom by
presenting three response choices, graded from 0 to 2 in the direction
of increasing severity. For example, "I am sad once in a while" is graded
0, "I am sad many times" is graded 1, and "I am sad all the time" is
graded 2. There is some preliminary evidence of clinical validity (Kovacs, 1981) and test-retest reliability and internal consistency (Friedman & Butler, 1979).
Normative data on a sample of 875 Canadian children in Grades 4
through 8 have been reported (Friedman & Butler, 1979). The mean
score and standard deviation on the CDI for these children were 9.3 and
7.3, respectively. Therefore in the present study depressed children were
denned as those who scored one standard deviation above the mean
established by Friedman and Butler (1979), that is, who had a score of
17 or higher. Nondepressed children were denned as those who scored
one standard deviation below the mean, that is, who had a score of 2 or
lower. Depressed and nondepressed subjects were drawn from a pool of
212 children in the fifth through eighth grades in a public school in
Vermont. Forty-two children (28 girls and 14 boys) met the depressed
group criterion (mean depression score of 24.3). Only 10% of the Fried-

532

H. LEITENBERG, L. YOST, AND M. CARROLL-WILSON

Table 2
Scores on the CNCEQfor Separate Comparisons of Depressed and Nondepressed, Low Self-Esteem and High Self-Esteem,
and High-Evaluation-A nxiety and Low-Evaluation-Anxiety Children
Self-esteem

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Vermont sample

New York sample

Evaluation anxiety

Measure

Depressed

Nondepressed

Low

High

Low

High

High

Low

Total distortion
Type of error
Catastrophizing
Overgeneralizing
Personalizing
Selective abstraction
Content area
Social
Academic
Athletic

70.31

42.07

66.73

45.48

66.23

51.15

66.91

48.81

17.83
18.36
17.17
16.95

10.17
10.05
10.69
11.17

16.69
17.00
16.58
16.46

11.11
10.88
11.68
11.81

15.87
17.29
16.46
16.61

12.91
12.13
12.88
13.23

16.31
17.19
16.62
16.79

11.06
11.73
12.36
13.67

25.00
23.07
22.24

15.21
14.12
12.74

23.23
22.10
21.40

16.67
14.80
14.01

24.21
21.68
20.34

18.63
17.09
15.43

24.25
21.97
20.68

17.35
15.96
15.50

Note. CNCEQ = Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire.

man and Butler normative sample had a depression score higher than
19, and according to Kovacs, as reported in Kaslow et al. (1984), a score
of only 11 is believed to represent mild depression. Thus, although one
cannot consider this to be a clinical sample of depressed children, they
certainly represent the high end of the spectrum of scores possible on
the CDI. The nondepressed group also consisted of 42 children (19 girls
and 23 boys), with a mean depression score of 1.4.

children to endorse negative cognitive errors. Given the correlation between self-report measures of low self-esteem and depression in children (cf. Hammen & Zupan, 1984; Moyal,

Results

Subjects and Met hod

The scores on the CNCEQ for depressed and nondepressed

children are summarized in Table 2. Although there were more
girls than boys in the depression group (for a recent similar
finding in elementary school aged children, see Seligman et al.,
1984), a series of two-factor ANOVAS (Sex X Depression Level)
demonstrated no statistically significant interactions between
sex and depression for any of the error types or content areas or
for total score.
Accordingly, sex was not included in a subsequent repeatedmeasures ANOVA (High vs. Low Depression X Error Type X
Content Area). In this comparison, we were interested only in
depression main effects and potential interactions between depression and error type and between depression and content
area. This is because main effects for error type and content
area were already studied in the larger sample used for obtaining normative data. The present analysis revealed a significant
main effect for depression, P( 1, 82) = 133.1 l,p < .001. There
was also a significant Depression X Error Type interaction, F(3,
246) = 3.76, p < .001. For the depressed group, Overgeneralizing
had the highest score (although only significantly more so in
the social area), whereas for the nondepressed group, as in the
normative sample, selective abstraction had the highest score.
There was no significant interaction between depression and
content area.

Study 3: Self-Esteem and Negative

Cognitive Errors in Children
The question addressed in this study was whether low selfesteem children would be more likely than high self-esteem

1977), our expectation was that the results would be in the same
direction as those obtained in Study 2 between relatively depressed and nondepressed children.

Two different samples of children and two different measures of selfesteem were used in this comparison. The first sample consisted of 52
low self-esteem children (29 girls and 23 boys) and 75 high self-esteem
children (35 girls and 40 boys) drawn from a larger pool of 726 children
in the fourth through eighth grades in Vermont public schools who had
been administered the Piers-Harris Self Concept Scale, a widely used
self-esteem measure developed for children (see Piers, 1969; Piers &
Harris, 1964; Wylie, 1979 for a full description of this measure and its
statistical properties). The questionnaire consists of 80 self-evaluative
statements that a child endorses or rejects by circling yes or no after
each item. In addition to a total score, six empirically derived factors
constitute subscales for which scores can be calculated.
The total score of the Piers-Harris was used to create low and high
self-esteem groups. Those children who scored lower than one standard
deviation below the mean of the total sample were considered to have
low self-esteem, and those who scored higher than one standard deviation above the mean were considered to have high self-esteem. The
mean score for the 52 low self-esteem children was 35.5, and the mean
score for the 75 high self-esteem children was 73.0. Unfortunately, these
52 low and 75 high self-esteem children do not represent all of the low
and high self-esteem children we had identified from the original pool
of 726 children. Because of practical problems the Piers-Harris and the
CNCEQ could not be administered concurrently to the majority of children and so summer vacation intervened between the spring, when the
Piers-Harris was administered, and the early fall, when we were able
to administer the cognitive error questionnaire. Because some children
moved over the summer and because some parents did not give permission for their children to participate again, approximately one third of
the originally identified low and high self-esteem subjects could not be
given the cognitive error questionnaire.
In part because of this methodological problem, the comparison between low and high self-esteem children was replicated in another sam-

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COGNITIVE ERRORS IN CHILDREN

pie. The pool of subjects for this second comparison consisted of the
637 children in public school in New York from whom we obtained
normative data. This time all low and high self-esteem children could
be included, and a self-esteem measure and the CNCEQ could be administered concurrently. To further generalize the results, we used a different self-esteem measure this time, the Harter Perceived Competence
Scale for Children (see Harter, 1982, for a full description of this scale
and its statistical properties). This scale contains 28 items with four
empirically derived subscales: (a) cognitive, (b) social, (c) physical, and
(d) general self-worth. One of the attractive features of this questionnaire is that the General Self-Worth subscale is not a simple summation
of the scores obtained from the other subscales. Instead, this is a separate subscale containing items that directly assess how much an individual likes himself or herself. This questionnaire is also constructed to
control for social desirability.
Only the General Self-Worth subscale was used to construct the extreme low and high self-esteem groups. As in the case of the Piers-Harris, one-standard-deviation cutoffs from our own large sample were used
to define these groups. This resulted in 87 low self-esteem children (55
girls and 32 boys), with a mean score of 1.6, and 75 high self-esteem
children (35 girls and 40 boys), with a mean score of 3.8.

Results

533

nificant interaction between self-esteem and content area occurred in either sample.

Study 4: Evaluation Anxiety and Negative Cognitive

Errors in Children
In this study we were interested in ascertaining how children
who reported relatively high symptoms of evaluation anxiety
would respond to the CNCEQ in comparison with nonanxious
counterparts. Even in the adult literature it is unclear whether
negative cognitive errors are particularly unique to depression
(cf. Coyne & Gotlib, 1983). Indeed Beck himself sometime ago
pointed out that some of these same negative cognitions (perhaps most notably catastrophizing) are associated with anxiety
disorders in adults (Beck, Laude, & Bohnert, 1974). Furthermore, because anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem tend to
cluster together in an internalizing dimension in children
(Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1981), it was expected that high-evaluation-anxiety subjects would be more likely than low-evaluation-anxiety subjects to endorse these negative cognitive errors,
as was the case in the comparisons between depressed and nondepressed children and between low and high self-esteem children.

Table 2 shows the scores on the CNCEQ for the low and high
self-esteem children from each sample separately. The number

Subjects and Met hod

of boys and girls in the low and high self-esteem groups was
not equal. However, an initial series of two-factor (Sex X SelfEsteem) ANOVAS did not demonstrate any significant Sex X
Self-Esteem interactions for total distortion, error type, or content area. Although not enough subjects in different grades were
represented in the Vermont sample, an analysis of the possible
interactions between grade level and self-esteem level could be
conducted in the New York sample. Again no significant interactions were obtained, indicating that the effect of low versus
high self-esteem on negative cognitive errors was the same regardless of whether the children were in the fourth, sixth, or
eighth grades. Accordingly, neither sex nor grade was included
in subsequent analyses.
Instead, the data for the Vermont and New \brk samples were
analyzed, separately, first using a three-factor repeated-measures ANOVA with self-esteem, error type, and content area as
factors. Again, we were interested in examining only self-esteem main effects and possible interactions between self-esteem
and error type and between self-esteem and content areas. For
each sample a significant main effect was found for self-esteem,
indicating that the low self-esteem groups had a higher total distortion score than did the high self-esteem groups (p < .001).
Subsequent analyses also indicated that low self-esteem children had higher scores on each cognitive error type and each
content area (p < .001 in all cases).
A significant Self-Esteem X Type of Error interaction was
found for the New York sample only F(3, 480) = 3.88, p< .01.
The reason for this interaction was that overgeneralizing was the
most strongly endorsed cognitive error in the low self-esteem
group, whereas in the high self-esteem group selective abstrac-

The Test Anxiety Scale for Children (Sarason, Davidson, Lighthall,

Waite, & Ruebush, 1960) is a widely used measure of evaluation anxiety
in children. It contains 30 questions, 12 of which mention the word test
(e.g., "Do you worry a lot before you take a test?" and "When you are
taking a test, does the hand you write with shake a little?"). The other
18 items focus on anxiety about classroom evaluations (e.g., "When the
teacher says that she is going to find out how much you have learned,
does your heart begin to beat faster?" and "Do you sometimes dream
at night that you are in school and cannot answer the teacher's questions?"). The child's anxiety score is simply the total number of yes
answers; thus, the possible range of scores is 0 to 30.
From the previously described sample of 637 fourth, sixth, and eighth
graders from public schools in New York, groups of low-evaluation-anxiety and high-evaluation-anxiety children were formed on the basis of
one-standard-deviation cutoffs below and above the mean for the entire
sample (M = 12.41, SD = 5.90). This resulted in 95 high-evaluationanxiety children (67 girls and 28 boys), with a mean score of 20.8, and
106 low-evaluation-anxiety children (40 girls and 66 boys), with a mean
score of 3.8.

Results
The scores of the high- and low-evaluation-anxiety subjects
on the CNCEQ are summarized in Table 2. Although there was
again a disproportionately greater number of girls in the highevaluation-anxiety group than in the low-evaluation-anxiety
group, an initial series of two-factor ANOVAS failed to demonstrate any significant Sex X Anxiety Level interaction on the
CNCEQ.
A three-factor repeated-measures ANOVA (High vs. Low
Evaluation Anxiety X Error Type X Content Area) revealed a
significant main effect for evaluation anxiety on the total distor-

tion was the most strongly endorsed and overgeneralizing the

least strongly endorsed cognitive error. However, the differences

tion score, F[\, 199) = 87.84, p < .001. Subsequent analysis

between these error types within each self-esteem group were

also revealed significantly higher scores for the high-evaluation-

not significant according to a simple effects analysis. No sig-

anxiety group compared with the low-evaluation-anxiety group

534

H. LEITENBERG, L. YOST, AND M. CARROLL-WILSON

for each error type and for each content area (p < .001 in all
cases). As was the case for the comparisons between depressed
and nondepressed children and between low and high self-es-

esteem, or pure high-evaluation-anxiety groups could be artificially created (i.e., one group of children who all score high on
depression but not also low on self-esteem or high on evaluation

teem children, a significant Evaluation Anxiety Level X Error

anxiety, and so on), the similarities between these factors seen

across Studies 2, 3, and 4 might not be evident.
Aside from Beck's cognitive approach to depression, the

Type interaction occurred, F(l, 597) = 6.71, p < .001. The basis
of this interaction, as shown in Table 2, was that low-evaluationanxiety subjects endorsed selective abstraction the most, followed by personalizing, overgeneralizing, and catastrophizing.
A simple effects analysis indicated that each of these error types
were significantly different from each other for the low-evaluation-anxiety subjects. No significant difference was found, how-

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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

ever, between error type in the high-evaluation-anxiety group,

although similar to the case of the depressed and low self-esteem
subjects, overgeneralization was endorsed the most. Again, similar to the depression and self-esteem comparisons, no significant interaction was found between evaluation anxiety level and
content area.

Discussion
In Study 2, in which a self-report measure of depression of
children was used to define depressed and nondepressed
groups, depressed children were found to endorse each type of
negative cognitive error in each content area significantly more
often than did nondepressed children. Similar comparisons in
Study 3 between low self-esteem and high self-esteem children
and in Study 4 between high-evaluation-anxiety and low-evaluation-anxiety children also revealed the same finding: low selfesteem and high-evaluation-anxious children endorsed each of
these negative cognitive errors in each content area significantly
more strongly than did their high self-esteem and low-evaluation-anxiety counterparts. This was equally true for both boys
and girls, and for the evaluation anxiety comparison, in which

other most popular cognitive model of adult depression focuses

on negatively biased causal attributions (Abramson, Seligman,
&Teasdale, 1978). It is noteworthy, therefore, that just as in the
case of Beck's types of distortions, causal attributional differences between depressed and nondepressed children (Leon et
al., 1980; Seligman et al., 1984) and between low self-esteem
and high self-esteem children (Fielstein et al., 1985) also mirror
the attributional differences observed between depressed and
nondepressed adults (e.g., Anderson, Horowitz, & French,
1983; Eaves & Rush, 1984; Golin, Sweeney, & Shaeffer, 1981;
Peterson, Luborsky, & Seligman, 1983; Raps, Peterson, Reinhard, Abramson, & Seligman, 1982; Seligman et al., 1979). In
other words, both depressed and low self-esteem children in
these recent causal attribution studies were found to be more
likely than their nondepressed and high self-esteem counterparts to attribute failure outcomes to internal, global, and stable
characterological defects (Janoff-Bulman, 1979; Peterson,
Schwartz, & Seligman, 1981), such as lack of ability. Similarly,
in a recent test of Rehm's (1977) self-control cognitive model
of depression, children who scored high on depression were also
found to exhibit self-control deficits, including more negative
self-evaluations, lower expectations for performance, and a
greater preference for self-punishment than self-reward (Kaslow et al., 1984). Such parallel findings between children and
adults are consistent with the position that symptoms of depression in children and adults may be more similar than was once

eighth grade. On the basis of these consistent differences, it

thought to be the case (Kashani et al., 1981).

Because this set of studies was designed to measure only negative cognitive errors, it is important to stress that there is no
basis for assuming any uniquely faulty logical thinking process
in depressed, low self-esteem, or anxious children. It's quite

seems fair to conclude that depressed, low self-esteem, and

high-evaluation-anxiety children are more likely to endorse the

possible that nondepressed, high self-esteem, and nonanxious

children distort just as much, if not more so, but in a self-en-

negative cognitive errors described by Beck et al. (1979) than

are their nondepressed, high self-esteem, and low-evaluationanxiety counterparts, just as depressed adults are more likely

hancing and positively biased manner rather than in a nega-

the number of subjects was sufficient to statistically evaluate

possible interactions with grade level, it also was found to be
true regardless of whether children were in the fourth, sixth, or

than nondepressed adults to endorse these same negative cogni-

tively biased manner. For example, if positively phrased vignettes and thoughts had been described, perhaps the children
who scored on the high end of the self-esteem questionnaires

tive errors (Lefebvre, 1981).

It should be emphasized that the stronger endorsement of

and the low end of the depression and evaluation anxiety inven-

each type of cognitive error was not unique to children who

comes, magnify the positive implications of favorable out-

scored on the high end of the Children's Depression Inventory.

The same finding was obtained in comparisons of low and high

comes, tend to erroneously claim personal responsibility for

self-esteem children and high-evaluation-anxiety and low-evaluation-anxiety children. This is not surprising given that low

tories would make overgeneralized predictions of positive out-

positive outcomes, or selectively attend to positive aspects

rather than to negative aspects of a situation. In other words,
both groups of children might make the same inferential errors,

self-esteem, depression, and evaluation anxiety are to some extent correlated with each other (cf. Hammen & Zupan. 1984;

but in opposite directions. Indeed, it could be hypothesized that

Moyal, 1977). Thus, a common factor might mediate the rela-

children might be more prone to look through rose-colored

tionship to negative cognitive errors. Moreover, even in adults,

it is not at all clear that any of the various dysfunctional cognitive styles that Beck (1967,1976) originally described as charac-

glasses (distort in a positive direction) than depressed, low selfesteem, and high-evaluation-anxiety children are prone to look
through dark colored glasses (distort in a negative direction).

teristic of depressed patients are truly specific to this disorder

(Coyne &Gotlib, 1983; Hollon & Kendall, 1980). Nevertheless,
the possibility remains that if pure depression, pure low self-

Such a hypothesis is supported by some recent findings that suggest that depressed adults may be more negative but yet more
realistic than normal controls (cf. Alloy & Abramson, 1979;

nondepressed, high self-esteem, and low-evaluation-anxiety

535

COGNITIVE ERRORS IN CHILDREN

Lewinsohn, Mischel, Chaplin, & Barton, 1980; Nelson &
Craighead, 1977) and the more general findings in the personality and social psychological literature that indicate that most
children and most adults are biased in a personally optimistic
and self-enhancing manner (cf. Bradley, 1978; Fischer & Leitenberg, 1986;Matlin&Stang, 1978; Smith, 1983).
Several limitations and caveats about the present set of results
should be recognized. First, there is obviously no certainty that

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

children's endorsement of a circumscribed set of thoughts in

response to hypothetical vignettes is congruent to what they
would actually think or report in a real situation. Questions
about concurrent validity with other methods of thought sampling await further research. Second, caution should be exercised before concluding that endorsement of negative cognitive
errors at one point in time reflect some enduring cognitive style
in children. It should be remembered that test-retest reliability
over 1 month was only .65 for the total distortion score. Third,
the issue of distinguishing between negative cognitions in children that are truly distorted and those that have some realistic
basis was not addressed in these studies. Even though it can be
argued that endorsement of any of the thoughts contained in
the CNCEQ is by definition distorted in so far as no evidence is
contained in the vignettes to warrant such thoughts, this is not
to deny that often there may be real differences in life histories
and current life circumstances that would lead depressed, low
self-esteem, and high-evaluation-anxiety children to be more
negatively biased in their interpretations of and predictions
about negative events. (For a full discussion of this issue in clinically depressed adults, see Coyne & Gotlib, 1983; Krantz,
1983.) These studies are limited also by their sole reliance on
standardized questionnaires to define levels of high and low depression, self-esteem, and evaluation anxiety. Although it seems
unlikely, it's conceivable that clinician, teacher, or parent ratings of children on these dimensions might show different relations to the negative cognitive error measure.
Some final comment might be made about the implications
of the present findings for Beck's theory of adult depression.
Beck (1967, 1976) argued that entrenched negatively distorted
cognitive styles predispose individuals toward a depressive disorder should they later encounter stressful events. Although
short-term longitudinal studies in adults have provided mixed
support, at best, for this hypothesis (Golin et al., 1981; Lewinsohn, Steinmetz, Larsen, & Franklin, 1981; Peterson et al.,
1981), these studies have not examined the specific cognitive
errors measured in the present study. Nor, obviously, have they
followed up children into adulthood. Thus, one can still entertain the admittedly speculative hypothesis that children who
tend to more strongly endorse the negative cognitions measured
in the present study may be more vulnerable to suffering a depressive disorder later in adulthood. In any case, the present
findings do at least support Kovacs and Beck's (1978) hypothesis that negative cognitions can be found in children and that
they are associated with depressive symptoms in children as
well as in adults.
Does this mean that Beck et al.'s (1979) cognitive approach
to treatment of adult depression is also applicable to children?
Not necessarily, but the results of the present study suggest that
this question may be worthy of more direct investigation than
has heretofore taken place (Kaslow & Rehm, 1983).

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Received May 31,1985

Revision received October 16,1985 i