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

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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, 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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1411-1424
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Abnormal Child Psychology
Volume48
Issue number11
Early online date13 Aug 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2020

Keywords

  • Adolescent
  • Aggression
  • Externalizing behavior problems
  • Intellectual level
  • Mild intellectual disability
  • Social information processing
  • Social situations

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