Parents' attributional, emotional and behavioural reactions towards aggressive behaviour in learning disabled and non learning disabled children

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The attributions parents make about the challenging behaviour of their children have been shown to be important determinants of their emotional and behavioural responses to such behaviour. In general, studies have found that if parents judge a child's behaviour to be caused by factors that are internal or controllable, then they will experience more negative emotions and respond using more punitive discipline strategies. To date, no study has directly compared parents' attributional, emotional and behavioural responses to challenging behaviour in learning disabled children with that of non-learning disabled children. In this study, it was hypothesised that parents would have different attributional, emotional and behavioural responses to aggressive challenging behaviour in a learning disabled child in comparison to a non-learning disabled child, on account of the child's learning disability.

Design: A questionnaire method was used to analyse within-subjects and between subjects differences on measures of attributional, emotional and behavioural responses to vignettes of aggressive challenging behaviour in learning disabled and non-learning disabled children.

METHOD: Fifty-four parents of children with aggressive challenging behaviour (20 with a learning disabled child and 34 with a non-learning disabled child) took part in the study. Participants read two vignettes depicting a learning disabled and a non learning-disabled child with aggressive challenging behaviour. They were then asked to complete questionnaire measures of attributional, emotional and behavioural response in relation to each vignette.

RESULTS: In comparison to aggressive behaviour in the non-learning disabled child, participants rated the learning disabled child's aggressive behaviour as being due to more global, more stable and less controllable causes, and reported that they would respond with less negative emotion and less punitive discipline strategies. No group differences (i.e. comparing parents with a learning disabled child and parents with a 1 non-learning disabled child) were found in attributional, emotional or behavioural responses to the two vignettes. The results are discussed with reference to previous research findings and clinical implications. Consideration is also given to the methodological shortcomings ofthe current study and suggestions for future research are made.