General event representations of young children in a child psychiatric clinic

Thirty-nine Children (5-8 years old) in a child psychiatric clinic and 50 5-year-old and 50 7-year-old schoolchildren were interviewed about two events: "getting dressed" and "a day in school". Both the children in the clinical and in the normal group formed general representations of these events. Children in the clinical group mentioned fewer acts, props and locations. Nearly all the children in both groups described how one gets dressed in the correct temporal order, but fewer children in the clinical than in the normal group described a day in school in the correct temporal order. Fewer children in the clinical than in the normal group gave causal explanations. Within the clinical group children with cognitive/attentional deficits tended to have less complete and less organized representations than children whose primary problems are relational.