Child Psychological Disorders Vocabulary Flashcards

Conduct Problems

Overview

• Conduct problems are disruptive behaviors exhibited by children and adolescents.
• Understanding their etiology is critical for effective treatment.

Etiology

Genetic Predisposition

• Conduct problems have a heritable component, with genetics accounting for 30-40% of the variance in disruptive behaviors.
• Specific genes remain unidentified, but children may inherit:
  • Difficult temperament
  • Physiological under-arousal

Difficult Temperament

• Affects various relationships and skills:
  • Parent-Child Relationship: Difficult temperament can interfere with bonding.
  • Coping Skills: Issues with self-regulation.
  • Social Problem-Solving: Hindered ability to navigate social situations.

Physiological Under-Arousal

• Children may show:
  • Reduced sensitivity to punishment.
  • A decreased capacity to experience pleasure.

Interpersonal Factors

Hostile Parenting

• Characteristics:
  • Models aggressive behavior rather than prosocial behavior.
  • Inconsistent discipline can lead to avoidance and escalation to abuse.
• Treatment: Emphasizes parent training for better behavioral modeling.

Coercive Family Process (Patterson et al., 1992)

• Dynamics:
  • Parent issues a command.
  • Child ignores the command.
  • Parent escalates the command.
  • Child reacts negatively, leading to withdrawal of command by the parent.
• Treatment: Focuses on improving parenting strategies.

Parent Cognition

• Important factors include:
  • Internal, stable attributions for the child's behavior can foster feelings of incompetence leading to hostility.
  • Low parental monitoring correlates with adolescent-onset conduct disorder (CD).
  • Insufficient supervision and lack of consequences for rule violations.
• Treatment: Involves increased parental engagement and monitoring.

Intrapersonal Factors

Encoding Social Cues

• Limited and superficial search for social cues leading to:
  • Inability to encode sufficient social information.
  • Tendency to focus excessively on negative cues.

Interpretation Bias

• Hostile Attribution Bias:
  • Children misinterpret social cues as hostile, escalating conflict.

Response Generation

• Searching for Responses:
  • Limited options considered for actions.
  • Often results in negative responses due to poor decision-making.
• Enactment:
  • Responses often delivered clumsily and awkwardly.

Longitudinal Research Findings

• Key outcomes associated with conduct problems include:
  • Increased likelihood of violent crimes, drug and property convictions.
  • Higher rates of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).
  • Correlation with experiences of child maltreatment and partner violence.
  • Associated with academic challenges such as high school dropouts, and mental health issues including depression/anxiety leading to unemployment.

Problem-Solving Skills Training (PSST)

• Attention: Teach children to focus on all relevant cues.
• Response Consideration: Encourage generating multiple responses and considering their consequences.
• Role Play: Use rehearsals and feedback to build competency in social interactions.
• STOPLIGHT Metaphor: Promote stopping to think before reacting, improving decision-making.