Executive functions and social information processing in adolescents with severe behavior problems

One tradition in research for explaining aggression and antisocial behavior has focused on social information processing (SIP). Aggression and antisocial behavior have also been studied from the perspective of executive functions (EFs), the higher-order cognitive abilities that affect other cognitive processes, such as social cognitive processes. The main goal of the present study is to provide insight into the relation between EFs and SIP in adolescents with severe behavior problems. Because of the hierarchical relation between EFs and SIP, we examined EFs as predictors of SIP. We hypothesized that, first, focused attention predicts encoding and interpretation, second, inhibition predicts interpretation, response generation, evaluation, and selection, and third, working memory predicts response generation and selection. The participants consisted of 94 respondents living in residential facilities aged 12–20 years, all showing behavior problems in the clinical range according to care staff. EFs were assessed using subtests from the Amsterdam Neuropsychological Test battery. Focused attention was measured by the Flanker task, inhibition by the GoNoGo task, and working memory by the Visual Spatial Sequencing task. SIP was measured by video vignettes and a structured interview. The results indicate that positive evaluation of aggressive responses is predicted by impaired inhibition and selection of aggressive responses by a combination of impaired focused attention and inhibition. It is concluded that different components of EFs as higher-order cognitive abilities affect SIP.     

Young children's social information processing: family antecedents and behavioral correlates

Little research has examined whether social information processing (SIP) measures from early childhood predict externalizing problems beyond the shared association with familial risk markers. In the present study, family antecedents and first-grade externalizing behaviors were studied in relation to preschool and 1st-grade SIP using data from the U.S. National Institute for Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care (N=1,364). A subgroup of low-risk children reported only benign attributions in preschool and had few externalizing problems in 1st grade according to both teacher and mother reports. After controlling for gender and cognitive functioning, the authors found that maternal education and authoritarian attitudes were key predictors of this "Pollyanna preschooler" status and of SIP in 1st grade. However, small effect sizes for SIP variables underscore the need for new approaches to measurement and for further research on moderators of the link between SIP and children's behavior.     

The development of social information processing and aggressive behaviour: Current issues

The social information processing (SIP) model is an important element in theoretical accounts of the development of aggressive behaviour. Aggressive behaviour is associated with and predicted by specific social information-processing patterns and interventions targeting these patterns are relatively effective. The present article discusses three directions in which further progress can be made. First, the SIP model may be improved to take better account of emotional processes. Second, issues concerning the validity of SIP assessment need to be resolved. Third, differential development of SIP needs to be studied and to be related to development of specific aggressive behaviour patterns. Recent findings concerning these three issues are reviewed and directions for research are discussed.     

Mothers' emotional expressivity and children's behavior problems and social competence: mediation through children's regulation.

The relations between mothers' expressed positive and negative emotion and 55-79-month-olds' (76% European American) regulation, social competence, and adjustment were examined. Structural equation modeling was used to test the plausibility of the hypothesis that the effects of maternal expression of emotion on children's adjustment and social competence are mediated through children's dispositional regulation. Mothers' expressed emotions were assessed during interactions with their children and with maternal reports of emotions expressed in the family. Children's regulation, externalizing and internalizing problems. and social competence were rated by parents and teachers, and children's persistence was surreptitiously observed. There were unique effects of positive and negative maternal expressed emotion on children's regulation. and the relations of maternal expressed emotion to children's externalizing problem behaviors and social competence were mediated through children's regulation. Alternative models of causation were tested; a child-directed model in which maternal expressivity mediated the effects of child regulation on child outcomes did not fit the data as well.     

Development and validation of the social information processing application: a Web-based measure of social information processing patterns in elementary school-age boys

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of an audio computer-assisted self-interviewing Web-based software application called the Social Information Processing Application (SIP-AP) that was designed to assess social information processing skills in boys in 3rd through 5th grades. This study included a racially and ethnically diverse sample of 244 boys ages 8 through 12 (M = 9.4) from public elementary schools in 3 states. The SIP-AP includes 8 videotaped vignettes, filmed from the first-person perspective, that depict common misunderstandings among boys. Each vignette shows a negative outcome for the victim and ambiguous intent on the part of the perpetrator. Boys responded to 16 Web-based questions representing the 5 social information processing mechanisms, after viewing each vignette. Parents and teachers completed measures assessing boys' antisocial behavior. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a model positing the original 5 cognitive mechanisms fit the data well when the items representing prosocial cognitions were included on their own factor, creating a 6th factor. The internal consistencies for each of the 16 individual cognitions as well as for the 6 cognitive mechanism scales were excellent. Boys with elevated scores on 5 of the 6 cognitive mechanisms exhibited more antisocial behavior than boys whose scores were not elevated. These findings highlight the need for further research on the measurement of prosocial cognitions or cognitive strengths in boys in addition to assessing cognitive deficits. Findings suggest that the SIP-AP is a reliable and valid tool for use in future research of social information processing skills in boys.     

Type A behavior and processing of social conflict information

Research suggests that the Type A pattern as assessed by the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) involves a number of stress-engendering cognitive/social responses. To identify potential responses responsible for social stress, the study tested the relationship between JAS Type A behavior and several cognitive/social variables relevant to assertiveness situations. Male undergraduates completed two measures of cognitive complexity and rated the reasonableness of another's request. Also, subjects were evaluated for positive content (i.e., consideration of the other) in role-played assertion responses. Type A behavior correlated with lower differentiation when sorting aspects of an assertion situation, lower integrative complexity when thinking about conflict topics, and less inclusion of consideration content.     

Rejected children's processing of interpersonal information

This research examined differences in the interpersonal information processing of socially rejected and average children. Rejected and average fifth-graders were presented with two pieces of videotaped information about peers, making judgments of the peers after each. Two judgment tasks, differing in the extent to which they were self-relevant, were used. The judgments were liking judgments for peers (low self-relevance) and predictions of how the peers would behave toward the self (high self-relevance). Rejected children used the available behavioral information differently than average children to make their predictions of how peers would behave toward them, but did not differ in their liking judgments. These findings were consistent with the hypothesis that rejected children's capabilities to process interpersonal information comparably to better adjusted children break down in highly self-relevant judgments.I thank John Coie and Gina Krehbiel, who helped identify subjects for this study. Also, my appreciation to Daniel Wegner, Linda Anooshian, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This paper was presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, April 1987.     

Gender similarities and differences in children's social behavior: finding personality in contextualized patterns of adaptation

This research examined how a contextualist approach to personality can reveal social interactional patterns that are obscured by gender comparisons of overall behavior rates. For some behaviors (verbal aggression), girls and boys differed both in their responses to social events and in how often they encountered them, yet they did not differ in overall behavior rates. For other behaviors (prosocial), gender differences in overall rates were observed, yet girls and boys differed more in their social environments than in their responses to events. The results question the assumption that meaningful personality differences must be manifested in overall act trends and illustrate how gender differences in personality can be conceptualized as patterns of social adaptation that are complex and context specific.     

Social relations of sexually abused children: A social information processing analysis

The implications of sexual abuse for the child’s interpersonal functioning and environment have been insufficiently understood, and this has repercussions that may limit comprehensive assessment and effective treatment. We suggest that clinicians and researchers need to address the new social challenges that may confront a sexually abused child. A social information processing model and its implications for therapy, and understanding the social difficulties of the sexually abused child, is presented.     

Adolescents' aggressive and prosocial behavior: associations with jealousy and social anxiety

The authors examined how relational aggression, physical aggression, and proactive prosocial behavior were associated with jealousy and social anxiety in a diverse sample of 60 middle school students. After the authors controlled for gender and race, jealousy predicted relational aggression and proactive prosocial behavior, but it did not predict physical aggression. Additionally, social anxiety predicted proactive prosocial behavior. Adolescents who were more jealous in their peer relationships also tended to engage in relational aggression and proactive prosocial behavior, and adolescents who were more socially anxious also tended to be proactively prosocial. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and suggest directions for future research.     

Assessing aggressive and depressed children's social relations with classmates and friends: a matter of perspective

This study examined aggressive, depressed, and aggressive–depressed childrenr's peer relations from the children's own and from their peers' perspective. Participants were 819 fourth through sixth graders (50.2% girls) who were assessed twice during the same school year. Measures included children's aggression and depression, self-rated and peer-rated social acceptance, number of reciprocal friends, and self-rated and friend-rated friendship quality. Analyses revealed different patterns, depending on the perspective considered. Depression but not aggression was significantly related to difficulties with the peer group and with dyadic friends from the children's own perspective, whereas the opposite pattern was found according to the peers' view. The co-occurrence of aggression and depression entailed significant difficulties with peers regardless of perspective. The implications of these results for the links between children's aggression and depression and their interpersonal relationships are discussed.     

Classification of children's behavior problems: Clinical and quantitative approaches

Children diagnosed Conduct Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, or Anxiety Disorder by DSM-III criteria were compared to contrast groups of Physically Disabled and Normal children using the Conners Teacher Rating Scale (CTRS). Discriminant function analyses of the CTRS ratings yielded accurate classification (67% correct) only when Conduct was combined with Attention Deficit and Normals were combined with Physically Disabled. The teacher raters seemed to be describing the children as behaviorally disordered with and without hyperactivity. The data also suggest that Attention Deficit Disorder is part of a broader Conduct Problems dimension.This study was part of a dissertation submitted to the Graduate School, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, by the senior author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. This research was supported in part by Maternal and Child Health Grant No. 424 awarded to the UCLA Neuropsychiatrie Institute. The authors express their appreciation to Alexander Tymchuck, Ruth Lambert, Robert Oldham, Arlene Yoshima, Augustus Adams, Deborah Stez, and Carol McDermott.     

Adolescents' emotion expectancies regarding aggressive and nonaggressive events: connections with behavior problems

A total of 50 behaviorally disruptive (conduct-disordered or oppositional defiant-disordered) adolescents and 50 comparison adolescents assessed how they expected to feel following both aggressive and nonaggressive situations. Compared with their peers, behaviorally disruptive adolescents expected fewer normative emotions and exhibited somewhat more of an anger emphasis in their nonaggressive emotion attributions, and they expected to feel happier following acts of instrumental/proactive aggression. These patterns of emotion expectancies were linked more closely with teacher ratings of adolescents' proactive aggression than with ratings of reactive aggression. Regression analyses indicated that both nonaggression emotion expectancies and proactive aggression happiness made independent contributions to predicting adolescents' externalizing tendencies. Discussion focused on the contributions of different types of self-attributed emotion expectancies to adolescents' social understanding and behavior.     

The relations between intellectual disabilities,social information processing,and behaviour problems

Social information processing (SIP) in children with mild intellectual disabilities (MID) has been said to differ from SIP in children without MID. However, findings have been inconsistent and MID have been confounded with behaviour problems. It is not clear whether SIP is uniquely related to intellectual disabilities, to the behaviour problems of children with MID, or to both. In the present study, 56 children with MID and 31 children without MID between the ages of 10 and 14 years therefore completed a number of SIP tasks involving video vignettes and their externalizing behaviour problems were assessed. It was hypothesized that intellectual disabilities would be related to both SIP and behaviour problems. Findings show children with MID to encode more negative cues, generate more responses, and show more variability in their responses than children without MID. Children with MID also generated fewer assertive responses, evaluated assertive responses less positively, were less confident about the enactment of assertive responses, and selected fewer assertive responses than children without MID. Submissive responses were more often generated spontaneously by children with MID, more positively evaluated by them, and given more confidence for enactment by children with MID compared to children without MID. Regression analyses were conducted to assess the relations between SIP, MID, and behaviour problems. Variance in the generation of submissive responses was related to both intellectual disabilities and externalizing behaviour problems. Variance in the encoding of cues, the number of responses generated, the variability of generated responses, the evaluation of assertive and submissive responses, self-efficacy, and the selection of assertive responses was found to be related to intellectual disabilities. Variance in the generation of aggressive responses was related to externalizing behaviour problems. In other words, not responding assertively was related to intellectual disabilities while responding aggressively was related to behaviour problems.     

Impact of a prevention program on aggressive children's friendships and social adjustment

A group of 46 aggressive boys aged 8 to 9 years participated in a prevention program aimed at reducing their externalizing problems in the short term and at preventing delinquency in the long term. Outcome measures were collected during the 3-year period following the prevention program. At that time, the boys were 10, 11, and 12 years old. Outcome measures included teacher ratings of aggressiveness and self-reports of delinquent behaviors. The boys' friends were rated on disruptive behaviors by their classmates. The experimental boys' outcome measures were compared to the measures obtained from 58 aggressive boys in a control group. The disruptive ratings of the experimental and control subjects' best friends were also compared. Differences in teacher-rated aggressiveness between the two groups increased from one year to the next for the 3-year followup period. Similarly, the friends' disruptive scores differed increasingly between the two groups over the 3-year period. The effect of the prevention program on the subjects' friendships and the mediating impact of friends with regard to social adjustment were stressed.This study was funded by the following agencies: National Welfare Grants Program of the Canadian Ministry of Health and Welfare, Conseil Québécois de la Recherche Sociale, Conseil de la Santé et des Services Sociaux Régional du Montréal Métropolitain, Fondation Cité des Prairies, Fonds FCAR-Centre et Equipes, Institut de la Recherche en Psycho-Education de Montréal, Centre d'Accueil le Mainbourg. Lucie Bertrand, Rita Béland, Michel Bouillon, Raymond Labelle, Hélène O'Reilly, and Daniel Reclus-Prince supervised or administered the intervention.     

Dimensions of children's classroom social behavior: A factor analytic investigation

Dimensions of children's classroom social behavior were investigated using the Social Behavior Assessment (SBA), a 136-item teacher rating scale (Stephens, T. M.Social Behavior Assessment. Columbus, Ohio: Cedars Press, 1979). Six relatively independent factors were identified as dimensions of children's classroom social behavior: Academic Responsibility, Social Responsibility, Cooperation, Compliance, Adaptive Behavior, and Participation. These six factors accounted for over two-thirds of the variance in teacher ratings and do not correspond with Stephens' (1979) original categorization. Consistent with past research, teachers appeared to consider those academic-related social skills associated with classroom order and control particularly salient. Directions for future research and recommendations concerning multifactored assessment of children's social skills are discussed.