Malleability of social impressions of hyperactive children

The role of adults' social cognitions in mediating judgments of hyperactive children's medicationrelated behavior change was explored. Two hundred eightyeight undergraduates observed two videotaped excerpts of a hyperactive target boy playing a group game with two peers. Each target was taking either methylphenidate (0.6 mg/kg) during both excerpts, placebo during both excerpts, methylphenidate first followed by placebo, or placebo first followed by methylphenidate. Adults' cumulative social evaluations of the child were assessed after they viewed both video segments. Results indicated that observers combined their perceptions of the two behavior samples into composite impressions using an equalweight averaging algorithm. Even for children whose behavior improved, adults' ratings of undercontrolled behaviors continued to meet or, in some cases exceed, research cutoff scores used to identify hyperactive children. The findings suggest that the actual behaviors of children with attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) play a more influential role in shaping interpersonal impressions than do perceiver socialcognitive processes such as primacy, recency, or integration biases.This project was supported in part by a UC Regents' Dissertation fellowship to Douglas A. Granger while at the University of California at Irvine. We acknowledge Tom Crawford and Karen Rook for their helpful comments at formative stages of this project, and support from the UCLA Fernald Child Study Center and Program in Psychoneuroimmunology. We thank behavior observers Leslie Klein, Jeanne Tsai, and Dawn Rowland, and data managers Pam Ajang and Scott Gutentag. A preliminary report of this study was presented at the 1991 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA.