Socio-cognition and resilience: the role of cognitive attributional style in secondary school transition

Resiliency in childhood has been used to explain the variation in outcomes between children who have experienced different circumstances. The presence of internal resiliency factors such as self-esteem or intelligence has been posited to explain the different outcomes for children who have experienced similar circumstances.

The current study argues that the socio-cognitive mechanism of cognitive attributional style should be considered as an internal resiliency factor. This is investigated by examining the role of cognitive attributional style in resilient responses to transition to secondary school.

The current study took place in three schools a north London borough. One group of participants ( n=136 )had recently made the transition to a school considered to be low-stress due to the continued presence of environmental protective factors similar to that of the primary school environment. The second group of participants (n= 148) had made the transition to more usual secondary school environment and were hypothesised to have experienced more stress.

Results showed that there was a significant association between cognitive attributional style and psychological adaptation to secondary school and that groups differentiated by negative, neutral or positive attributional styles differed significantly on scores of psychological adaptation.

It was found that cognitive attributional style had a stronger association with psychological adaptation in the low-stress environment. The additive model of resiliency is used to explain this finding.

No significant differences were found in psychological adaptation between participants who differed in terms of ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender or academic attainment.

Cognitive attributional style was found to be the strongest predictor of psychological adaptation to secondary school above ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender and academic attainment.

Methodological issues which may account for this finding are discussed.