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Assessment of the cognitive attentional syndrome in children: an adaptation of the CAS-1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2020

Nicoline Normann Open the ORCID record for Nicoline Normann [Opens in a new window] ,
Marie Louise Reinholdt-Dunne ,
Martin Stolpe Andersen  and
Barbara Hoff Esbjørn Open the ORCID record for Barbara Hoff Esbjørn [Opens in a new window]
Nicoline Normann*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Marie Louise Reinholdt-Dunne
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Martin Stolpe Andersen
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Barbara Hoff Esbjørn
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Nicoline.normann@psy.ku.dk
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Abstract

Background:

Research suggests that the metacognitive model is applicable to clinical child populations. However, few measures related to the model are available for younger age groups. A key concept of the model is the cognitive attentional syndrome (CAS), which encompasses the individual’s worry and rumination, maladaptive coping strategies, and metacognitive beliefs. While the CAS has been successfully measured in adults, this has not yet been attempted in children.

Aims:

The aim of this study was to adapt a measure of the CAS for use with children and investigate the measure’s associations with anxiety, worry, depression and metacognitions.

Methods:

Our study included 127 children with anxiety disorders aged 7–13 years. The adult measure of CAS was adapted for use with children and administered at pre- and post-treatment. We examined the correlations between variables and the ability of the CAS measure to explain variance in anxious symptomatology, as well as the measure’s sensitivity to treatment change.

Results:

The adapted measure, CAS-1C, displayed strong associations with overall anxiety, depression, worry and metacognitions. The CAS-1C explained an additional small amount of variance in anxiety and worry symptoms after accounting for metacognitions, which may be due to the measure also assessing thinking styles and coping strategies. Furthermore, the measure displayed sensitivity to treatment change.

Conclusions:

The child measure of the CAS is a brief tool for collecting information on metacognitive beliefs and strategies that maintain psychopathology according to the metacognitive model, and it can be used to monitor treatment changes in these components.

Keywords

child anxietychild depressionmetacognitionregulation strategiescoping
Type
Main
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , May 2021 , pp. 340 - 351
Copyright
© British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 2020

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