PSYC 412 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Relational Aggression, Truancy, Conduct Disorder
14 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSYC 412: Developmental Psychopathology
Jan 31st, 2018
Lecture 8:
• Mediators: mediating variables
o Moderators: weve talked about these
▪ A variable that influences direction/strength of relationship between
two variables
▪ E.g. age as a moderator of treatment effects
▪ Moderator variables answer questions about
who
: who benefits from
treatment? Shows the effect?
o Mediators: answer questions about why/how
▪ A variable that explains the relationship between two other variables
▪ E.g. socioeconomic status associated with conduct problems in kids:
why? What about SES leads to increase in conduct problems? One
possibility is that lower SES is associated with increase in child abuse
which then leads to increase in conduct problems: child abuse so the
mediating variable answering question
why
do we see association?
• Costello et al.
o Study on destructive behaviors in families in first nation community
o Examined possible mediators of association between increase in income and
decrease in behavioral symptoms
o Poverty is associated with a lot of different things, and any of these could be
the reason that changing poverty changes destructive behavioral symptoms
o In this study they looked at 40 possible mediators and the only one that
came out was increased parental supervision
▪ Increase in income led to improved parental supervision, which in turn
led to decreased behavior problems
• Prevalence
o Gender differences
▪ Conduct problems are 2-4x more common in male children, but there
are smaller differences in early teens
• This is because more girls engage in covert, nonaggressive
behavior in early adolescence (lying, truancy)
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▪ Early onset conduct disorder much more common in boys than in girls:
10:1 ratio
▪ Adolescent-limited CD
• More common in boys but less pronounced 2:1 ratio
▪ More physical aggression shown by males across life span
• Aggression in girls
o Girls may not be physically aggressive but can harm people in other ways, like
relational aggression
▪ Harming other people by attacking their social relationships
• Rumor spreading, exclusion
• More common for girls than physical aggression is
▪ Girls are not more likely to show relational aggression than boys:
comparable rates between boys and girls, girls may be slightly higher
but its a very small difference
▪ Boys antisocial behavior tends to be more overt: physical aggression,
vandalism, etc. and it might get them noticed
younger
than girls
• Developmental Course
o Infants
▪ Babies are all very different from one another: all have different
temperaments
• Some babies have difficult temperaments: more fussy, more
irritable, cry more, harder to sooth/calm down
• Some evidence that boys who show this sort of temperament
might be at a greater risk to have ODD
o Preschoolers
▪ Significant problems emerge for some kids
▪ Two diagnostic challenges:
• Most symptoms are impossible or improbable for very small
children, e.g. truancy, staying out all night
▪ So how do we adapt symptoms to a younger age group?
• Preschoolers may show physical aggression, verbal aggression
lying, property destruction
▪ Some non-compliance is normative in preschoolers
▪ Normative misbehavior in preschoolers
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• Noncompliance, temper loss, and aggression
• Childrens physical aggression increases and peaks at about 2”
months of age
• 40% of girls and 50% of boys are reported by their parents to
hit, kick, and bite occasionally
• 75% of preschoolers have temper tantrums
• DBD in preschoolers: diagnostic challenges
o How do we distinguish typical misbehavior from that representing a
significant problem
▪ Severity: hitting with hand vs. hitting with an object
▪ Frequency: if normative behaviors happen
a lot
it may be concerning
▪ Expectability: is behavior happening in circumstances where we often
see kids having difficulties?
▪ Pervasiveness: is this behavior limited to a particular situation or one
relationship? The more we see it across settings and relationships the
more problematic it will be
▪ Flexibility: how easy is it for me as an adult to modify this childs
behavior?
• For some preschoolers, we start to see evidence of significant conduct problems
fairly early on in their life
o Early onset/life-course persistent pathway
▪ To be diagnosed in DSM we need to see at least one symptom before
the age of 10, and this is much more common in boys
▪ 50% of people who show symptoms early will persist in antisocial
behavior into adulthood
▪ Typical progression: aggression in childhood → less serious
nonaggressive antisocial behavior in middle childhood (shoplifting,
truancy) → more sever aggressive behaviors including violence towards
others
o Late onset pathway
▪ Onset in adolescence, frequently accompanied by social change
• Peer influences: 2:1 or 1:1 male to female ratio (more girls
engage in these types of behavior)
• Less extreme antisocial behavior
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