Cognitive and neuropsychological functioning in transnationally adopted juvenile delinquents

Abstract

Aim: To evaluate cognitive and neuropsychological abilities of adopted delinquent adolescents in institutional care. Methods: Transnationally adopted adolescents admitted to institutional care (n= 20) and non‐delinquent controls who were also transnationally adopted (n= 21) were compared concerning the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and Adults (WISC and WAIS), the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Tower of London test (TOL). The adoptive parents answered questions about the adoption, early childhood and family circumstances by a questionnaire sent by mail. Results: The adopted delinquents had a significantly lower IQ and significantly lower results on several other measurements in the WISC/WAIS compared to the controls even after adjustment for age of arrival in the adoptive home. Both groups of adoptees scored low in the WISC/WAIS subscale of arithmetics when compared to the population mean. The TOL test showed that the delinquents were slower and made more errors than the controls. Conclusion: The delinquent adoptees scored significantly lower on many variables in the WISC/WAIS. Both delinquent and non‐delinquent adoptees had some difficulties with arithmetic. The weak performances in arithmetics might point to some weaknesses in the neuropsychological domain. These results probably have complex explanatory causes and need to be further evaluated.

Decision-making under risk and theory of mind in adolescent offenders in provisional deprivation of liberty

“…Nevertheless, this hypothesis extrapolates the data and does not seem to be in accordance with the literature, which has found that adopted juvenile delinquents scored lower in the arithmetic subscale of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children compared to the population mean. 34 It should be noted, however, that both controls and ACL still performed within the expected average in our study. In general, ACL reported more cannabis use and more problems related to substance use when compared to controls, with most of the ACL group being at risk for substance use disorder.…”

Impaired executive function in 14‐ to 16‐year‐old boys with conduct disorder is related to recidivism: A prospective longitudinal study

“…Findings from studies on relationships between WCST scores and antisocial behaviour have been inconsistent – higher in higher violence groups (Rosse et al, ), no difference from healthy controls in adolescent delinquency (Elmund et al, ) and impaired in domestic violence (Cohen et al, ) and among offenders with high psychopathy scores (Ishikawa et al, ). Although one study revealed a difference in WCST results between recidivist and comparison groups (Valliant et al, ), we believe that this is the first prospective longitudinal study assessing the relationship between WCST results and recidivism.…”

Relation Problems in Internationally Adopted Juvenile Delinquents

“…goodness of fit) between the adoptee and his/her parents. It has been established that the adoptive parents are well above average concerning educational level [45,46] whereas their children have an average IQ of 85 [33]. This is only one example of differences that might exist between the adopted delinquent group and their parents.…”

“…The adopted delinquents (the probands, N=20) were admitted to institutional care for juvenile delinquents according to the Swedish laws for compulsory care and treatment of delinquent youths (LVU or SoL) for treatment mostly because of an acute crisis in the family, violence and problems in school (Figure 1). For information on continent of origin and age on arrival to Sweden, see Table 1 [33]. For two years (2000)(2001)(2002), many recently admitted adoptees were interviewed.…”