EJECUCIÓN FORZADA

The conclusions which can be drawn about therapy and prevention of childhood

disorders on the basis of the present study must, by necessity remain extremely

tentative. Yet, to the extent that symptoms within a general population may provide

an analogue of clinical distress, and attributions about hypothetical situations an

analogue for children’s explanations of real-life events, the present study’s findings

suggest that childhood depression, social and general anxiety may well be similarly

associated with pessimistic attributional style, and hence benefit from the same

therapeutic strategies.

Should fiiture research establish that children’s attributional style acts as a cognitive

diathesis for distress, this would have considerable implications for service

development. Thus children identified as “at risk” from future psychopathology on the

basis of their attributional style could be targeted for early intervention. Such

interventions might not only attempt to modify children’s attributional bias through the

use of cognitive-behavioural strategies, but also lessen the stressfulness of events they

experience, either at home or at school (Alloy et al, 1989)

In fact whether attributional style proves to be important as a diathesis for clinical

disorders may not necessarily have any implications for the effectiveness of strategies

derived from the model. Thus several cognitive vulnerability models, but particularly

that of Beck (1967, 1976) have been the source of highly effective therapeutic

constructs. Somewhat surprisingly however given the extent o f research concerning

the association between pessimistic attributional style and both clinical and sub-clinical

levels of depression, relatively few attempts have been made to examine their clinical

implications (Forsterling, 1990).

Thus although attributional retraining programmes have been used within laboratory

based studies to alleviate children’s learned helplessness, there have been few

consistent efforts to generalise their findings to a clinical setting. More importantly,

those few studies incorporating attributional retraining have typically concerned adults

(DeRubeis & Hollon, 1995), and attempts to transfer these strategies to a child

population have generally proved unsuccessfiil (Kendall, 1991).

Although attributional theory itself does not appear to have led to the generation of

therapeutic strategies, it is possible that its similarity to other cognitive theories may

provide a useful indication of future directions. Thus Seligman (1981) points out the

parallels between the tendency to make internal, stable and global attributions for

failure postulated by the reformulated learned helplessness theory and Beck’s (1967,

1976) cognitive triad. Thus the bias of depressed individuals towards internal

attributions for failure is characteristic of their negative view o f themselves, the

stability of their attributions leads them to perceive the future as hopelessly negative,

whilst the globality of their attributions for negative events leads them to perceive a

wide range of situations pessimistically.

Many of the therapeutic strategies suggested by Beck and his colleagues (Beck, Rush,

therefore be relevant to children’s pessimistic attributional style. In particular,

techniques aimed at challenging individual’s perceptions of events through the

introduction of new or previously unacknowledged information may also impact upon

their attributions. Thus for example a therapist might encourage a child to seek out

information which challenges their internal, stable attributions for failure through the

use of behavioural tests. Given the present study’s demonstration of the strong

association between children’s explanation for positive events and distress, the former

may well provide an important focus for intervention. Thus therapeutic strategies

aimed at increasing both the frequency and saliency of such events for children,

together with encouraging children to view them in a relatively optimistic light may

prove particularly effective. Certainly Needles and Abramson (1990) have suggested

that those distressed adults who tend to attribute positive events to stable and global

causes, appeared more likely to recover on encountering with such events, than those

who perceive them in more pessimistic terms.

Children’s attributions may also critically determine the form an intervention must take

in order to have meaning for them. Sobol and Earn (1985) have suggested that the

way in which children perceive or interpret events is likely to effect the efficacy of any

behavioural intervention. Thus those children who make more “internal’ attributions

for success might well respond best to a self-instructional treatment program whereas

those who view failure in terms of external and uncontrollable factors might benefit

from a program of structured external reinforcement. Given that the present study

indicates children experiencing high levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms

respond best to some form of cognitive intervention, in which they are encouraged to

provide more realistic explanations for important life events.

It is of course possible that children’s attributional styles are relatively unimportant

within either the development or mediation of children’s distress. As Peterson (1991)

points out, causal explanations certainly do not exhaust the thoughts that determine

any individual’s behaviour. However, given the robust associations which have been

demonstrated between children’s attributional style and their symptoms of depression

and now, anxiety, what such research does provide is a useful jumping off point for

future studies. As our body of knowledge about children’s expands, so increasingly

sophisticated models of disorder will emerge, and with them, a clearer understanding

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