Developmental Origins of Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression: Parenting, Cognitive, and Inferential Feedback Styles of the Parents of Individuals at High and Low Cognitive Risk for Depression

Abstract

In this study, we examined the role of three social learning mechanisms in the development of undergraduates' depressogenic cognitive styles: modeling of parents' negative cognitive styles; negative inferential feedback from parents regarding the causes and consequences of stressful events in the child's life; and negative parenting practices. We obtained partial support for each of the three hypotheses. Compared to the parents of cognitively low-risk students, cognitively high-risk students' mothers exhibited more negative dysfunctional attitudes and inferential styles themselves; high-risk students' fathers showed less emotional acceptance and warmth; and high-risk students' mothers and fathers both communicated more stable, global attributional feedback and negative consequence feedback for stressful events in their children's lives. In addition, both parents' inferential feedback and fathers' emotional acceptance predicted their undergraduate children's likelihood of developing an episode of major or minor depression or the subtype of hopelessness depression during a 2.5-year prospective follow-up period, with some of these predictive associations mediated totally or in part by the students' cognitive vulnerability status.