Trick or Treat?: Uneven Understanding of Mind and Emotion and Executive Dysfunction in “Hard‐to‐manage” Preschoolers

Abstract

It is widely recognised that impaired social relations are characteristic of school-aged children with behavioural disorders, and predict a poor long-term outcome (Parker & Asher, 1987). However, little is known about the early antecedents of social impairment in behaviourally disturbed children. The aim of the present study was to explore three areas of potential dysfunction in younger children: theory of mind, emotion understanding, and executive function. Forty preschoolers, rated by their parents on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1994) as "hard to manage" (H2M) were compared with a control group on a set of: (1) theory of mind tasks (including an emotion prediction task involving either a nice or a nasty surprise); (2) emotion understanding stories (that required affective perspective-taking skills as well as situational understanding); and (3) simple executive function tasks (adapted for preschoolers, and tapping inhibitory control, attentional set-shifting, and working memory). Small but significant group differences were found in all three cognitive domains. In particular, hard-to-manage preschoolers showed poor understanding of emotion and executive control, poor prediction or recall of a false belief, and better understanding of the belief-dependency of emotion in the context of a trick than a treat. Moreover, executive function was associated with performance on the theory of mind tasks for the hard-to-manage group alone, suggesting both direct and indirect links between executive dysfunction and disruptive behaviour.

Emotion-recognition abilities and behavior problem dimensions in preschoolers: Evidence for a specific role for childhood hyperactivity

“…It is possible, for example, that children with poor verbal abilities may be at a disadvantage in performing tasks that rely on verbal responses. Previous research suggests that poor verbal ability may play a role in the facial emotion-recognition difficulties seen in preschoolers with externalizing symptoms (Hughes, Dunn, & White, 1998), and future research should include verbal ability measures in emotionrecognition tasks that rely on verbal responses. The stimuli used in the current study might also account for the pattern of results.…”

Predicting the early developmental course of symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

“…The majority of these studies (9/11) have found a significant association between ADHD symptoms and deficient behavioral inhibition (Berlin & Bohlin, 2002;Berlin et al, 2003;Byrne, DeWolfe, & Bawden, 1998;Campbell et al, 1982Campbell et al, , 1994Hughes, Dunn, & White, 1998;Marakovitz & Campbell, 1998;Sonuga-Barke et al, 2002;Sonuga-Barke, Dalen, & Remington, 2003), adding credence to the hypotheses that early behavioral inhibition predicts later ADHD symptoms and may influence the relationship between early and later ADHD symptoms.…”

Executive functioning in preschool children born very preterm: Relationship with early white matter pathology

“…At four years (corrected age), EF was assessed using a modified version of the Detour Reaching Box (DRB) Task (Hughes et al, 1998;Hughes & Russell, 1993). This task provides a measure of inhibitory control (i.e., the ability to inhibit a prepotent, salient response) and the ability to switch effectively from a previously reinforced rule.…”