Citation

Matthys W, Cuperus JM, Van Engeland H. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 1999; 38(3): 311-321.

Affiliation

Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital Utrecht, The Netherlands. wmatthys@psych.azu.nl

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, Publisher Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

10087693

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To study social problem-solving skills in psychiatrically defined aggressive boys, starting from Dodge's social information-processing model. METHOD: Videotaped stimuli of problematic social situations and questions were presented to elicit responses that indicate boys' social problem-solving skills (encoding and interpretation of social cues, generation of possible responses, evaluation of responses, self-efficacy evaluation, and response selection). Boys aged 7 to 12 years with oppositional defiant or conduct disorder (ODD/CD) (n = 48), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (n = 27), and both disorders (ODD/CD + ADHD) (n = 29) were involved as well as a normal control group (n = 37) and a psychiatric control group with internalizing disorders (n = 23). RESULTS: When compared with normal controls, boys with ADHD, with ODD/CD, and with ODD/CD + ADHD encoded fewer social cues and generated fewer responses. Boys with ODD/CD and with ODD/CD + ADHD moreover were more confident in their ability to enact an aggressive response than normal controls. When ODD/CD boys and ODD/CD + ADHD boys were given the opportunity to select a response from various types of responses shown, they selected an aggressive response more often than normal controls. Thus, in ADHD boys social problem-solving was affected only in encoding and in the generation of responses, whereas in ODD/CD and ODD/CD + ADHD boys social problem-solving was affected throughout the process. CONCLUSION: For the further study of social problem-solving in aggressive children, it is essential to differentiate between children with ADHD and children with ODD/CD and ODD/CD + ADHD.

Language: en