Social information processing in mild mentally retarded children

Processing ambiguity in a social situation: A developmental and comparative study between a neurotypical population and a population with mild intellectual developmental disorder or borderline intellectual functioning

BACKGROUND

The Social Information Processing (SIP) model has helped to identify specificities in the stages preceding the execution of social behaviour in people with mild intellectual developmental disorder or borderline intellectual functioning. However, uncertainties remain about the involvement of the underlying processes and their developmental expression.

METHOD

The aim of this research was to explore the stages of SIP from a comparative and developmental perspective. A total of 175 participants, from childhood to adulthood, with or without mild intellectual developmental disorder or borderline intellectual functioning, watched videos before answering a structured questionnaire relating to the SIP model.

RESULTS

The results showed developmental specificities in encoding, a hostile intention attribution bias and the absence of specific behavioural patterns in a population with mild intellectual developmental disorder or borderline intellectual functioning compared with a neurotypical population.

CONCLUSION

These advances are discussed in relation to current clinical remediation therapies and new exploration methods.

Interpersonal Cognitive Biases in Children and Young People with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Systematic Review

Purpose of Review

Interpersonal cognitive biases have been linked to externalising and internalising problems. This systematic review investigates their role in children and young people with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), who have a high risk of experiencing such problems.

Recent Findings

With 16 identified studies, this is a widely under-recognised research area. The three studies conducted within the last 5 years focused on threat interpretation and its association with anxiety. No difference between children and young people with and without NDD was found in the eleven studies investigating hostile attribution of intent, of which the most recent is nearly a decade old. No studies addressed attention or memory bias towards ambiguous interpersonal information.

Summary

The scarcity and heterogeneity of research highlighted in this paper demonstrate the urgency to use standardised and accessible research methods to develop a strong evidence base regarding the potential content-specific interpretation bias in individuals with NDD.

Targeting hostile attributions in inclusive schools through online cognitive bias modification: A randomised experiment

The tendency to make hostile attributions in ambiguous social situations has been associated with aggression and may be targeted through cognitive bias modification for interpretations (CBM-I). Despite their high prevalence of aggression and internalising problems, children and young people with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) or special educational needs (SEN) are markedly absent from CBM-I studies. This pilot study investigates whether online CBM-I can reduce hostile attributions and reactive aggression in inclusive school pupils. In Study 1, 71 pupils (mean age = 12.2, SD = 1.5; 25.4% presented with NDD or SEN) were randomly allocated to complete three sessions of either CBM-I (n = 37) or active control training (n = 34). CBM-I involved interpreting ambiguous scenarios or faces in a non-hostile manner, whereas the control training involved attention and memory exercises without resolving ambiguity. Between-group comparison showed CBM-I to reduce both hostile attributions and reactive aggression. In Study 2, follow-up focus groups with 23 pupils demonstrated the acceptability of training content and delivery. Together, these findings show online CBM-I to be acceptable and effective at reducing both hostile attributions and reactive aggression in an inclusive setting. The possibility of intervention effects on behavioural outcomes and potential confounding variables require further investigation.

Accidental and Ambiguous Situations Reveal Specific Social Information Processing Biases and Deficits in Adolescents with Low Intellectual Level and Clinical Levels of Externalizing Behavior

Addressing aggression in youth requires understanding of the range of social problem situations that may lead to biased social information processing (SIP). The present study investigated situation-specificity of SIP and analyzed whether SIP deficits and biases are found in ambiguous as well as clearly accidental situations in adolescents with clinical levels of externalizing behavior or with low intellectual level, congruent with mild intellectual disability. Adolescents (N = 220, M_age = 15.21) completed a SIP test on a mobile app with six videos with ambiguous, hostile, and accidental social problems. Caretakers, teachers, and adolescents themselves reported on youth externalizing behavior problems. In accidental situations specifically, adolescents with low IQ scores more often attributed purposeful intent to perpetrators than peers with borderline or average IQ scores. In accidental situations, adolescents with clinical levels of externalizing behavior generated and selected more aggressive responses than nonclinical adolescents, regardless of their cognitive level. In line with previous literature, the ambiguous situations also brought out SIP differences between IQ groups. These results suggest that not only ambiguous situations should be considered informative for understanding SIP biases, but situations in which adolescents are clearly accidentally disadvantaged bring out SIP biases as well, that may lead to conflicts with others.

Inclusiveness of cognitive bias modification research toward children and young people with neurodevelopmental disorders: A systematic review

Cognitive bias modification (CBM) is increasingly used to target cognitive biases related to internalising or externalising problems, which are common in neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). This systematic review assesses the available evidence for using CBM in children and young people with NDD, in particular regarding ambiguous interpersonal information, and the extent of their exclusion from this type of intervention research. PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, MEDLINE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and Science Citation Index were consulted using MeSH terms and synonyms of "neurodevelopmental disorders", "mental health problems", "cognitive bias", "modification" and "review". Data extraction focused on the efficacy of CBM for NDD, how CBM was delivered, whether studies adopted exclusion criteria relating to NDD and the rationale for such criteria. The search identified 2270 records, of which twenty-nine studies assessed CBM for interpretations and were included in the qualitative synthesis. Three studies targeted bias in NDD, whereas a third of studies explicitly excluded participants based on NDD-related criteria: most frequently intellectual impairment, reading or learning difficulties and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Only one study provided a rationale for excluding NDD which related to the reading demands of their intervention. There is tentative evidence for the feasibility of using CBM to reduce interpretation bias in children and young people with mild intellectual disability, ASD or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We recommend that CBM research should consider including participants with NDD, use CBM tasks and adaptations that enable this group's inclusion, or provide a sufficient rationale for their exclusion.

Attribution of negative intention in Williams syndrome

People with Williams syndrome (WS) are said to have sociable and extremely trusting personalities, approaching strangers without hesitation. This study investigated whether people with WS are less likely than controls to attribute negative intent to others when interpreting a series of ambiguous pictures. This may, at least partially, explain their hypersociability toward strangers. Twenty-seven individuals with WS and 54 typically developing controls (27 matched to WS participants on sex and chronological age and 27 matched on sex and mental age) viewed 10 ambiguous pictures, where one person in the picture may be seen as having a negative objective. Participants were asked to describe what was happening in the picture. Responses were scored for negative intention attribution (NIA). NIA was reduced in WS individuals relative to typically developing controls of the same chronological age, but was similar to typically developing controls of the same mental age. Findings are discussed in relation to possible underlying neurological and cognitive mechanisms and practical implications for understanding and teaching stranger danger to people with WS.

Emotion discourse, social cognition, and social skills in children with and without developmental delays

This study examined parent-child emotion discourse, children's independent social information processing, and social skills outcomes in 146 families of 8-year-olds with and without developmental delays. Children's emergent social-cognitive understanding (internal state understanding, perspective taking, and causal reasoning and problem solving) was coded in the context of parent-child conversations about emotion, and children were interviewed separately to assess social problem solving. Mothers, fathers, and teachers reported on children's social skills. The proposed strengths-based model partially accounted for social skills differences between typically developing children and children with delays. A multigroup analysis of the model linking emotion discourse to social skills through children's prosocial problem solving suggested that processes operated similarly for the two groups. Implications for ecologically focused prevention and intervention are discussed.

A review of defining and measuring sociability in children with intellectual disabilities

There is a substantial body of research indicating that compromised social functioning for individuals with intellectual disabilities has far reaching implications for quality of life, community participation and wellbeing. However, an inherent difficulty for research into social functioning is the lack of agreed definition of key concepts in the area. The current paper reviews definitions for four concepts related to the central concept of sociability (social cognition, social competence, social skills and social behaviour). By reviewing the definitions available in the wider social and cognitive psychology literature and comparing these to definitions provided in research with individuals with intellectual disabilities it is clear that concepts are poorly defined. The current article proposes working definitions which may be used give impetus to future debate in the area. The clinical implications of having implicitly understood concepts rather than definable and measurable traits are considered. The review calls for researchers to provide definitions for the concepts under investigation and their relationship to measures employed in research.

Social reasoning skills in adults with Down syndrome: the role of language, executive functions and socio-emotional behaviour

BACKGROUND

Although the prevalence of mental illness and behaviour problems is lower in adults with Down syndrome (DS) than in other populations with intellectual disabilities, they do present emotional and relational problems, as well as social integration difficulties. However, studies reporting on specific competences known to be central in developing appropriate social relationships (e.g. social reasoning, emotion processing, theory of mind) remain rare in the adult DS population and the mechanisms underlying these people's emotional and relational difficulties are unclear.

METHOD

The present study investigated the ability to understand the appropriateness of others' social behaviour in 34 adults with DS, using the Social Resolution Task (SRT). Their results were compared with those of 34 typically developing (TD) children matched for gender and receptive vocabulary. The relationships among the SRT experimental task, cognitive competences (receptive and productive vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, inhibition, selective attention) and a caregiver-rated measure of socio-emotional behaviour were examined in the DS group.

RESULTS

The DS participants' global SRT scores did not differ from those of the controls. However, analyses of the SRT subscores revealed that the DS group identified significantly fewer inappropriate situations than the control group. Nevertheless, when they correctly identified the behaviour as inappropriate, they were as well as the controls to explain the rules underlying their responses. Regression analyses showed that receptive vocabulary and selective attention and a specific dimension of the socio-emotional profile (social relating skills) constituted the best predictors of the DS adults' performance on the SRT.

CONCLUSIONS

The main findings show that the DS participants demonstrate relatively good social reasoning skills in comparison with TD children matched for verbal age. However, the two groups present distinctions in their response patterns, and the influence of cognitive variables on success on the SRT also appears different. While selective attention skills are found to be significant predictors for both groups, the influence of receptive vocabulary level is much stronger in the DS group. The implications of particular cognitive and socio-emotional factors for success on the SRT in this group are considered in more detail.

O processamento das informações sociais em crianças e adolescentes agressivos

Este artigo tem por objetivo revisar a literatura internacional publicada no período de 1980 até 2004 sobre o Modelo de Processamento das Informações Sociais, utilizando as palavras-chave cognição social e processamento de informações sociais (PsycINFO). Os autores analisam a convergência desses estudos quanto ao processamento das informações sociais por crianças e adolescentes agressivos. De acordo com o modelo, a resposta comportamental de uma criança ou adolescente para um estímulo social problemático ocorre em função de diferentes etapas de processamento: codificação das pistas sociais, interpretação das pistas sociais, busca de respostas, avaliação das respostas e atuação. Após uma breve introdução histórica sobre o modelo e seus principais postulados, são descritos alguns estudos empíricos sobre o tema. Uma relação entre o processamento de informações sociais e a manifestação de comportamentos agressivos foi confirmada nesta revisão, mas verificou-se uma baixa incidência de artigos contemplando amostras clínicas.