Social problem-solving skills in boys with conduct and oppositional defiant disorders

✍ Scribed by Susanne E. Dunn; John E. Lochman; Craig R. Colder

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 98 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0096-140X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2337(1997)23:6<457::aid-ab5>3.0.co;2-d

✦ Synopsis

The current study compared the social problem-solving skills of a clinic-based sample of 30 boys diagnosed with conduct disorder (CD) and 25 boys diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Past research has indicated that contextual factors influence children's social problem-solving; thus, three hypothetical conflict situations (i.e., child-child, teacher-child, and parent-child) and situations which differed by degree of negative intent of the provocateur (i.e., hostile vs. ambiguous intent) were examined. Problem-solving strategies were aggregated into three broad dimensions: 1) aggressive/ antisocial solutions; 2) nonverbal-nonaggressive solutions; and 3) verbal-nonaggressive solutions. Compared to ODD boys, CD boys proposed more aggressive/antisocial solutions in parent-child conflicts when parental intent was ambiguous and in teacher-child conflicts regardless of intent. Compared to ODD boys, CD boys proposed fewer verbalnonaggressive solutions in child-child conflicts. The implications of these findings for treatment intervention with CD and ODD boys were discussed.