Hypothèse d’un dysfonctionnement émotionnel chez des adolescents présentant des comportements à risqué : une étude exploratoire

Abstract

Problem behaviour in adolescents today has become a real public health problem, because of the potentially heavy consequences on their mental integrity. Although a number of studies have pointed out the importance of emotional functioning in this phenomenon, its characteristics have not been clearly defined. In the field of pathological emotional functioning, the aim of the study was to explore the differences in emotion variables, verbal emotion expression ability and behaviour, and notably behaviour inhibition ability. We hypothesised that we would observe significant differences between adolescents who exhibit problem behaviour and those who do not, in the three fields of subjective emotional experience, emotion verbalization, and behavioural reaction. The sample for this investigation consisted in 40 high-school students--divided into two groups of 20 subjects: The first group: Problem Behaviour (PB), mean age: 15.2 +/- 1.2, sex ratio (M/F): 14/6, and the second group: No Problem Behaviour (NPB) mean age: l4.6 +/- 1.5, sex ratio (M/F): 13/6. Subjects were included into the PB group by completing a short questionnaire assessing problem behaviour (including verbal and behavioural violence, multiple exclusions of more than one day, substance use, and other risk-taking behaviour). To explore the emotional reactivity to stimuli, we provoked emotions using films excerpts with three situations: anger, joy and sadness. We assessed the subjective experience of emotion using the Differential Emotion Scale (DES, Izard, 1972), the verbal emotion expression by quantitative discourse analysis, and motor activity using the number of movements during stimuli exposure. Statistical analysis (repeated ANOVAs) showed significant differences (p<0.0001) in subjective emotional intensity, motor activity (p<0.0001), and verbal emotion expression ability (p<0.0001) between the two groups. Adolescents with problem behaviour presented lower subjective emotional experience intensity, greater motor activity and reported less emotional words to describe their feelings. Our results show an emotional dysfunction in adolescents with problem behaviour. These results are consistent with previous investigations, supporting the importance of emotional processing in the ability of people to cope with environment. This dysfunction may be linked to a pathology in the ability to "feel" the emotions. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.