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

M M Van Rest,W Matthys,J B Kupersmidt,M Van Nieuwenhuijzen,A Vriens,C Schuengel

doi:10.1007/s10802-020-00676-x

Abstract

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, Mage = 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.

Highlights

To better understand the social cognitive processes that underlie aggressive behavior in youth, the social information processing (SIP) model was developed by Dodge (1980) and adapted by
To answer whether SIP is situation-specific for adolescents with Low IQ score (LIQ) and adolescents with behavior problems the multivariate two-way interaction effects between Situation Type and either Cognitive Level or Externalizing Behavior were examined
In the current study we found evidence for situation-specific SIP in ambiguous, and clearly in accidental situations: four SIP skills were biased in adolescents with low intellectual level, congruent with a mild intellectual disability, both in accidental and ambiguous situations

Summary

Introduction

To better understand the social cognitive processes that underlie aggressive behavior in youth, the social information processing (SIP) model was developed by Dodge (1980) and adapted by. Research based on the SIP model shows that youth with aggressive and related externalizing behavior encode less information, are biased toward making hostile attributions of the intent of others in ambiguous situations, are prone toward generating aggressive response options, evaluate these responses positively, and select an aggressive response among several available responses (e.g., Fontaine et al 2002; Oostermeijer et al 2016; Orobio de Castro and van Dijk 2018; Raikes et al 2013). Building on the seminal studies by Dodge and colleagues (Dodge 1980; Dodge and Frame 1982; Dodge et al 1984) on child intent attributions in various situations, it is expected that accidental situations may provide complex processing for adolescents with behavior problems These adolescents more often have negative cognitive schemas (e.g., mistrusting others) which have a negative influence on SIP skills (Calvete and Orue 2012). Investigating this situationspecificity for SIP skills in adolescents with low intellectual level, congruent with mild ID, and in adolescents with behavior problems was our second main goal of the study

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Conclusion