Social perspective-taking and adjustment in emotionally disturbed, learning-disabled, and normal children.
Preadolescent emotionally disturbed, learning-disabled, and normal boys were compared on social perspective-taking and behavioral measures to examine possible contributions of social cognitive deficits to children's adjustment problems. Antisocial-prosocial and withdrawn-gregarious behavior dimensions were studied through subscales derived from teacher ratings. Results indicated that across all groups, high perspective-taking was associated with significantly less withdrawal than was low perspective-taking; within groups, this finding was significant only for the emotionally disturbed boys. Contrary to theoretical assumptions, antisocial behavior was not significantly related to perspective-taking across the sample. Among emotionally disturbed boys, relatively higher affective perspective-taking was significantly correlated with higher antisocial behavior. This positive correlation for the emotionally disturbed group was significantly different from the nonsignificant negative correlation between antisocial behavior and perspective-taking among normals. Findings for learning-disabled boys were intermediate between results for emotionally disturbed and normal boys on both perspective-taking and behavioral measures, and the learning-disabled group generally did not differ significantly from either other group. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.
D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000523:psychology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D012917:Social Adjustment; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception