The Etiology of Oppositional Defiant Disorder for Children with and without Intellectual Disabilities: A Preliminary Analysis

ABSTRACT

Background: Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) appears more prevalent among children with intellectual disabilities (ID) as compared to children with typical development. However, it remains unclear what drives this difference.

Methods: Data from 70 youth with typical development (TD) and 20 youth with ID were drawn from (The Collaborative Family Study). The relationships between child temperament and parent psychopathology (age 3), parenting behavior and child behavior problems (age 5), and ODD diagnosis (age 13) were explored via structural equation modeling. The predicted model was examined in the total sample, among children with and without ID separately, and with status (TD vs. ID) as a predictor.

Conclusion: Many of the predicted relationships hold true for youth with and without ID. However, we found an unexpected relationship between negative-controlling parenting and child externalizing behavior problems for children with ID. The positive role of parental intrusiveness for children with ID is discussed, although limitations are noted due to the small sample size and preliminary nature of this study.

KEYWORDS:

• Intellectual disability
• oppositional defiant disorder
• comorbidity
• etiology
• conduct problems

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ For the purpose of this paper, the term “negative emotionality” will be used to capture susceptibility to negative emotions, including anger, frustration, and sadness. However, other investigators have captured this construct via neuroticism or emotional reactivity (Gartstein et al., 2016; Tung et al., 2018).

² Of note, fearfulness is the term used here, given the name of the associated scale in the measure used in the present study. However, this construct is also captured as shyness and/or behavioral/inhibitory control (Kagan, 1989).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [34879-1459].