COGNITIVE TRIAD INVENTORY FOR CHILDREN - DEVELOPMENT AND RELATION TO DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY

Described development of a measure to assess in children the three aspects of the negative cognitive triad postulated by Beck as being central to depression. The Cognitive Triad Inventory for Children (CTI-C), is a 36-item scale comprising three subscales: View of Self, View of World, and View of Future. Adequate internal consistency reliability and concurrent validity or the instrument are reported for 132 children, Grades 4 through 7, who were identified through a multiple-gate screening procedure. Depressed children (n = 14) and depressed-and-anxious children (n = 18) reported a significantly more negative view of themselves, the world, and the future than did the anxious (n = 11) and control (n = 15) children. Discriminant-function analyses indicated that 62% of the children were accurately classified based on their CTI-C scores alone.