Parental Interpretation Biases as a Transdiagnostic Risk Factor for Adolescent Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms

Anxiety and depressive symptoms often emerge during adolescence. Although parents play an important role in shaping adolescent mental health, the prospective association between parental cognitive biases and adolescents' mental health remains underexplored. This longitudinal study examined whether parental interpretation biases (IBs) were prospectively associated with changes in adolescents' anxiety and depressive symptoms, and whether adolescents' own IBs statistically mediated these associations.

A community sample of 88 adolescents (M_age = 12.85 years; 51% boys) and their parents (M_age = 45.66 years; 83% mothers) living in Canada completed a computer-based Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) to assess interpretation biases. Both parents and adolescents self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms at baseline, and adolescents provided follow-up data 1 year later.

Path analysis indicated that more negative parental IBs were significantly associated with increases in adolescents' anxiety and depressive symptoms over 1 year, even after controlling for parental internalizing symptoms. The magnitude of effects did not significantly differ between anxiety and depression, and a Bayesian informative hypothesis test provided evidence that the effects were comparable. Unexpectedly, the analyses did not support adolescents' IBs as a statistical mediator of the association between parental IBs and adolescents' symptom changes. However, parental IBs remained significant predictors above and beyond adolescents' own IBs and parental internalizing symptoms.

This work provides preliminary evidence for parental cognitive biases as a transdiagnostic predictor of adolescents' emotional outcomes, operating above and beyond the effects of parental symptomatology and adolescents' own IBs. As such, parental IBs may be a valuable target in interventions aimed at fostering healthier emotional development in adolescents.