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Peer relationships and prosocial behaviour differences across disruptive behaviours

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Abstract

It is unclear if impairments in social functioning and peer relationships significantly differ across common developmental conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD), and associated callous–unemotional traits (CU traits). The current study explored sex differences and symptoms of parent- and teacher-reported psychopathology on peer relationships and prosocial behaviour in a sample of 147 referred children and adolescents (aged 5–17 years; 120 m). The results showed that increases in parent-reported ADHD Inattentive symptoms and teacher-reported ADHD Hyperactive–Impulsive symptoms, CD, ODD, and CU traits were significantly associated with peer relationship problems across sex. At the same time, teacher-reported symptoms of ODD and both parent- and teacher-reported CU traits were related to difficulties with prosocial behaviour, for both boys and girls, with sex explaining additional variance. Overall, our findings show a differential association of the most common disruptive behaviours to deficits in peer relationships and prosocial behaviour. Moreover, they highlight that different perspectives of behaviour from parents and teachers should be taken into account when assessing social outcomes in disruptive behaviours. Given the questionable separation of conduct problem-related constructs, our findings not only point out the different contribution of those aspects in explaining peer relationships and prosocial behaviour, but furthermore the variance from different informants about those aspects of conduct problems.

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Acknowledgements

Sara Milledge was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant number ES/J500161/1). The SHARE database was funded by Shire and Solent NHS Trust. We thank the young people, their parents, and teachers for taking part in this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Sara V. Milledge, Samuele Cortese, Margaret Thompson, Fiona McEwan, Michael Rolt, Brenda Meyer & Hedwig Eisenbarth

  2. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Kings College, London, SE5 9RJ, UK

    Edmund Sonuga-Barke

  3. School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 6011, New Zealand

    Hedwig Eisenbarth

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  1. Sara V. Milledge
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  2. Samuele Cortese
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Correspondence to Hedwig Eisenbarth.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution (ERGO ID: 23218) and national research committee (REC reference 14/WA/0149; IRAS ID: 138982) and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Milledge, S.V., Cortese, S., Thompson, M. et al. Peer relationships and prosocial behaviour differences across disruptive behaviours. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 28, 781–793 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-018-1249-2

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