Research Projects

to be added

The primary objective of this study is to investigate cognitive biases to threat-related information across three groups of parents and children: Children undergoing active treatment for cancer, Children in remission and healthy control children. The children and their parents will perform several cognitive tasks, assessing attention bias, working memory bias, and memory bias. Stimuli in the tasks will be cancer-related, non-cancer negative and neutral. These types of stimuli were chosen in order to explore whether the biases are specific to stimuli that are related to the acquired illness. In conclusion, this study aims to examine: 1. Cognitive biases in children with cancer, children in remission and healthy children. 2. Examine cognitive biases in parents of children with cancer, children in remission and healthy children.

Childhood cancers are life-threatening diseases and are a major cause of death in children worldwide. Research shows that children with cancer are at risk for psychopathology, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression. Major theories of psychopathology assign a significant role to the way people attend to and remember negative content as predictors and maintenance factors in emotional disorders. Thus, the aim of the proposed research is to delineate factors that may predict psychopathology among children with cancer. In line with central theories of emotional disorders (Mathews & MacLeod, 2005), we focus on cognitive biases involving processing threat-related information, and their relation to psychopathology. The children in the active phase of the treatment and those in remission will perform several cognitive tasks, assessing attention bias, working memory bias, and memory bias. Biases will involve stimuli related with cancer, non- cancer negative and neutral. These types of stimuli were chosen to explore whether the biases are specific to stimuli that are related to the acquired illness. Subsequently, they will be interviewed using semi-structured clinical interviews to assess the presence of emotional disorders. Finally, they will complete a set of questionnaires assessing symptom severity of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. For a control group we will have a healthy children group. In conclusion this study aims to : Examine the associations between cognitive biases and psychopathology among children with cancer, children in remission and healthy children.