Abstract
In order to investigate the relation between cognitive error and anxiety in children, we developed a Children's Cognitive Error Scale (CCES), which measures cognitive errors in elementary school children in anxious situations, and then investigated the relation between scores on this Scale and trait anxiety. From answers by 217 elementary school children to open-ended questions about anxiety or worry, 12 anxiety situations were extracted. With the assistance of 5 clinical psychology graduate students, 23 primary items were selected for the Scale. Principal component analysis of data from 819 elementary school students (408 boys and 411 girls) resulted in the extraction of 20 items for the Scale. Reliability of the Scale, using the test-retest method and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were high enough (0.66 for the former, and 0.85 for the latter) . Content validity was checked through interviews with 2 elementary school teachers. In order to investigate gender and grade differences, ANOVAs were conducted on the Scale scores. The results indicated that the girls showed more cognitive errors than the boys, and that there were no grade differences. In order to investigate the relation between cognitive errors and trait anxiety, scores on the Scale were compared among 3 groups; results from ANOVAs indicated that children with high cognitive errors showed higher trait anxiety scores than children with moderate and low cognitive errors.
