ORIGINAL ARTICLE Childhood Maltreatment and Depressotypic Cognitive Organization Margaret N. Lumley Æ Kate L. Harkness Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract Recent research suggests that how information is organized in the mind may be important for determining one’s vulnerability to depression. The purpose of the cur- rent study was to examine potential developmental pre- cursors to a depressotypic cognitive organization (i.e., tightly-connected negative schemas and loosely-connected positive schemas) in a sample of young adult men and women (N = 91). The relation between childhood mal- treatment (i.e., mother emotional maltreatment, father emotional maltreatment, physical abuse, and sexual abuse) and cognitive organization was assessed using a computer task in which participants with different self-reported maltreatment histories plotted a series of cognitive schema contents (e.g., ‘‘I am a failure’’) on a 2-dimensional grid along the dimensions of self-descriptiveness and valence. As hypothesized, higher levels of mother emotional mal- treatment, father emotional maltreatment and physical abuse (but not sexual abuse) were associated with a de- pressotypic schema organization. Consistent with hypoth- eses, a depressotypic schema organization mediated the relation between maltreatment and depression, suggesting that the organization of cognitive schemas may help to elucidate why individuals with maltreatment histories are so vulnerable to develop depression. Keywords Depression  Childhood maltreatment  Emotional abuse  Cognitive vulnerability Introduction The cognitive theory of depression holds that negative core beliefs, or ‘‘schemas’’ about oneself, one’s world and one’s future foster vulnerability for depression by influencing how an individual interprets experience (Beck 1967, 1976). Cognitive schema vulnerability to depression has been examined in two ways: (a) the content of the schemas (i.e., the theme of the core beliefs: ‘‘I’m worthless’’, etc.) and (b) the organization or structure of these schemas. A large body of cross-sectional and prospective research has implicated negative cognitive schema contents in depression (for reviews see Abela and Hankin 2008; Dozois and Beck 2008; Ingram et al. 1998). Comparatively, we know much less about how these cognitive schema contents come to be structured in the mind. Beck (1967, 1976), Beck et al. 1979; Dozois and Beck 2008) have suggested that recollections of hostile, critical, and abusive parenting form the foundation of a tightly-connected negative schema structure that cre- ates vulnerability for depression. The purpose of the present study is to provide the first empirical test of the role of child maltreatment as a potential developmental precursor for a depressotypic schema structure. Cognitive Organization and Depression Cognitive structure, or ‘‘cognitive organization’’, refers to how negative and positive cognitive schemas (e.g., ‘‘I am unlovable,’’ ‘‘I am a good person’’) are represented in the mind in relation to other schemas. This conceptual struc- ture may be thought of as a map or associated network M. N. Lumley (&) Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada e-mail: mlumley@uoguelph.ca K. L. Harkness Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada e-mail: harkness@queensu.ca 123 Cogn Ther Res DOI 10.1007/s10608-009-9257-7