Exploring the Predictive Values of Self-evaluations and Cognitive Distortions in Relation to Childhood Anxiety among Hispanic/Latino Youth

Philadelphia

The purpose of this study was to determine whether self-evaluation and cognitive distortions are predictors of anxiety in Hispanic/Latino youth. Hispanic/Latino elementary- and middle-school students (n = 84) from Grades 4 through 8 (42.9% female; average age = 11.80 years) attending a bilingual inner-city public charter school completed self-reports of anxiety, self-evaluation, and cognitive distortions in their school setting. The selected measure of cognitive distortions, Inventory of Cognitive Distortions (Yurica & DiTomasso, 2005), was revised and factor analyzed for the current child sample. Findings demonstrated that, while taking grade and gender into account, different domains of self-evaluation and cognitive distortions significantly predicted overall anxiety symptoms. Additionally, various subtypes of anxiety-related symptoms were found to be negatively correlated with certain domains of self-evaluation and positively related to nearly all types of cognitive distortions. These findings provide support for previously established connections between self-evaluation, cognitive distortions, and anxiety. Furthermore, these results demonstrate that such connections exist in Hispanic/Latino youth. Given the significant predictive relationships identified in the present study, targeting specific domains of self-evaluation and cognitive distortions within the treatment of anxiety may result in greater symptom reduction.