Abstract
The present study examined if a social positive illusory bias (PIB) is: a) simply a reflection of low adult-rated social acceptance, b) evident when children’s perceived social acceptance is measured implicitly, and c) directly relates to impaired executive functioning (EF). Participants were 8 to 12 year-old children (N = 120; 55 boys and 65 girls) with and without clinical symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Ratings of the child’s social acceptance were obtained from an adult and the child using the Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter 2012); social bias was calculated as the discrepancy between standardized adult- and child-ratings. Children also completed a reaction time measure to assess implicit perceptions of social acceptance and a battery of EF measures. Depression symptoms were assessed based on parent report. Group comparisons were focused on the presence or absence of social PIB rather than on ADHD diagnostic status. Relative to non-PIB children, those with a social PIB were significantly higher in self-reported social acceptance, but significantly lower on adult reports and implicit perceived social acceptance; these children also were significantly higher in depression symptoms. EF impairments were indirectly related to social PIB as a function of adult-rated social impairment. Results suggest that social PIB is not merely a reflection of low adult-ratings of social acceptance. However, the high explicit self-reports of social acceptance in children with a social PIB are not fully consistent with their implicit self-perceptions of social acceptance. Results are discussed in light of the self-protective and cognitive deficits hypotheses regarding the nature of social PIB.
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Notes
One additional child from the original sample was excluded due to non-compliance with study procedures which invalidated relevant measures. Four additional participants (3 with ADHD and 1 control) were excluded because their accuracy on the IAT was more than 2.5 standard deviations below the mean accuracy for children without ADHD (63 %).
Parent and teacher reports of symptoms were based on children’s unmedicated behavior; however for a subset of medicated children (n = 10), teachers did not have an opportunity to observe the child unmedicated and provided symptom ratings based on medicated behavior.
Of the 65 control children, 63 had no more than 3 symptoms in either ADHD symptom domain and no more than 4 symptoms total. The remaining 2 subjects classified as controls had 4 symptoms of inattention or hyperactivity-impulsivity (but not both); neither of these children displayed a social PIB. Because of the dimensional approach to data analysis, these additional control subjects were retained, even though their symptom levels were slightly elevated.
For 16 % of participants, teachers declined to complete study measures; when teacher data was not available, parent data was used instead. For children who had multiple teachers, the teacher who was most familiar with the child was selected to provide ratings.
Some researchers have measured a social PIB as the discrepancy between unstandardized adult- and child-ratings and have defined extreme PIB as a score greater than one (Linnea et al. 2012; McQuade et al. 2011). Using this alternative definition, the –PIB group was too small to be examined (n = 6). However, the +PIB (n = 25) and No-Bias (n = 83) group differences were consistent for adult-rated (p < 0.001) and implicit social acceptance (p = 0.033), depression (p = 0.003), and EF (p = 0.001). For self-perceived social acceptance, the +PIB group (M = 3.42, SD = 0.61) was higher than the No-Bias group (M = 3.24, SD = 0.58) but this difference was not significant (p = 0.174). This non-significant effect may be due to a reduction in power from the smaller sample size of the +PIB group. Additionally, the non-standardized discrepancy score was more strongly associated with adult-rated social acceptance (r = −0.72) than child rated acceptance (r = 0.40). This may bias results such that effects are stronger for adult-rated measures but weaker for child-rated measures (De Los Reyes and Kazdin 2004).
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the families and teachers who generously participated in this study. We would like to acknowledge Rebecca Zakarian and Angelina Gómez for their important role in collecting this data.
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McQuade, J.D., Mendoza, S.A., Larsen, K.L. et al. The Nature of Social Positive Illusory Bias: Reflection of Social Impairment, Self-Protective Motivation, or Poor Executive Functioning?. J Abnorm Child Psychol 45, 289–300 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0172-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0172-6