Abstract

1
Behaviors Leading to Social Acceptance and
Rejection in Young Adolescents with ADHD
Implications for Social Skills Interventions Becky
Wilde, Steven W. Evans, Zewelanji Serpell,
Sheryle Moore, Casey White Liz Buvinger
Abstract Effective Social Skills interventions
for youth with ADHD and social impairment seldom
appear in the literature and of those that do,
only limited success has been demonstrated. This
study examined behaviors that may lead to social
acceptance or rejection with a group of
adolescents during a week long summer camp for
youth with ADHD in the hope of informing the
development of effective social skills
interventions.
Introduction Methods
Results (continued)
Discussion

• The specific interpersonal behaviors that shape
  the initial impression of peers and remained in
  the regression models for Day 1 data are
  displayed below in Table 2. Results are reported
  for rejected and ignored status only because the
  strongest predictive values (as shown in Table 1)
  were found on Day 1 for these two statuses.
  Squared semi-partial correlations reported in
  Table 2 explain the unique variance of each
  interpersonal behavior variable and the Pearson
  correlation indicates the relationship (including
  shared variance) and the direction of the
  relationship.

• To what degree do interpersonal behaviors shape
  impressions and peer status? Consistent with
  previous findings in the literature, results in
  Table 1 suggest that negative social statuses
  (rejection R2 .44, ignored R2 .43) are
  largely based on observable and measurable
  behaviors. The ability of the regression models
  to predict social status decreased from Day 1 to
  Day 5. These results suggest that it may be
  difficult to identify the specific behaviors that
  contribute to social status after the initial
  impression. Other factors that are difficult to
  measure such as reputation and history of
  behavior may become increasingly important over
  time. The implications of these findings for
  social skills interventions are daunting since
  these are variables that are largely out of the
  control of the adolescent being treated.
• Which interpersonal behaviors shape the initial
  impression of peers for middle school age youth
  and influence peer status? Table 2 reveals that
  there are specific characteristics that predict
  negative perceptions (e.g., brings everybody
  down, tells private business to people).
  Interpersonal behaviors italicized in Table 2
  appear to lead youth to being either rejected or
  ignored. Being perceived of as exhibiting these
  behaviors should be carefully avoided especially
  during the first few hours of meeting people.
  Social skills interventions may specifically
  target behaviors leading to these perceptions in
  their procedures.

• There are many challenges faced by youth during
  the middle school years and these are complicated
  by the added obstacles associated with ADHD. As
  challenging as social functioning is to these
  youth, success in this area is important to long
  term psychological and social adjustment
  (Caldarella Merrell, 1997) as well as adult
  outcomes (Hansel, 1985 Roff Wirth, 1984).
• Children identified as rejected or ignored tend
  to remain rejected or ignored in spite of changes
  in behavior (Blythe, 1983 Coie Dodge, 1983)
  and since dense social networks foster the
  development and maintenance of successful social
  skills during adolescence (Kupersmidet, Coie,
  Dodge, 1990) being ignored or rejected is
  critically disabling. In addition, first
  impressions have been shown to be persistent,
  even when an individuals behavior changes
  (Sunnafrank Ramirez, 2004 Nordstrom, Hall,
  Bartels, 1998 Johnson, Ironsmith, Snow Poteat,
  2000). This is especially true if those initial
  impressions are negative (Ybarra, et al., 1999).
  This suggests that it may be important to develop
  social skills interventions that not only focus
  on the maintenance of interpersonal relationships
  but also on the management of first impressions.
• Many of the existing social skills interventions
  were developed around preschool and elementary
  age children (e.g., skills streaming). Very
  little literature exists on the effectiveness of
  social skills interventions for middle school
  youth with ADHD (Guevremont Dumas, 1994).
  Although there is some evidence that there are
  psychosocial interventions (Evans et al., 2005)
  as well as medication treatment (Smith, Pelham,
  Evans et al., 1998) that may help to improve
  social functioning for adolescents, there is a
  lack of evidence to support social skills
  interventions that have a long term meaningful
  impact (Bagwell, Molina, Pelham Hoza, 2001) as
  most social skills interventions have been shown
  to be only minimally effective (Mathur, Kavale,
  Quinn, Forness, Rutherford, 1998).
• In order to guide the development of social
  skills treatments for adolescents with ADHD that
  address the importance of managing first
  impressions, it is necessary to revisit the
  underlying causes of social rejection in youth
  with ADHD by examining naturally occurring social
  interactions as a means of identifying the
  behaviors that contribute to favorable and
  unfavorable first impressions.
• This poster presents data that address the
  following questions
• To what degree do interpersonal behaviors shape
  impressions and peer status?
• Which interpersonal behaviors shape the initial
  impression and influence the peer status of
  middle school age youth with ADHD?
• How do initial impressions influence peer
  status after 5 days of extensive contact?

• To investigate interpersonal behaviors associated
  with the development of social status, 20 young
  adolescents (ages 10-15 19 male) with ADHD,
  participating in a week long summer program, were
  evaluated.
• At midday, on the 1st, 3rd and 5th day of the
  program, participants were provided with a
  picture of each of the 19 other youth and asked
  to complete a rating scale for each of them.
• The first question asked how well the pictured
  youth was known to the youth completing the
  rating scale. There were 5 possible responses
  Dont Know, Just met, Know a little, Know well
  and Best Friends.
• Four statements followed that described general
  social statuses (rejected, ignored, popular,
  friend). Statements included Others reject this
  person and I would like to be friends with this
  person with five possible responses from 0 (very
  true) to 4 (very false)
• The remaining 26 items were developed from a
  search of the literature that yielded a list of
  traits adolescents most valued in their friends
  and disliked in others (Bergin et al., 2003
  Deptula Cohen, 2004 ). Statements describing
  the traits were listed and after review for
  repetition and ease of understanding, the
  original 50 plus items were reduced and rewritten
  as 26 statements that reflected both pro-social
  traits (makes everyone smile) and negative
  attributes (loud and obnoxious). Items were
  phrased in language thought to be familiar to
  middle school youth. Participants were asked to
  rate how likely it was that the statement is an
  accurate description of the person in the
  picture. They chose from a 5-point response scale
  ranging from 0 (very likely) to 4 (very
  unlikely).

• How do initial impressions influence peer status
  after 5 days of extensive contact? The youth who
  were most rejected and ignored on day 1 were the
  most rejected and ignored on day 5. These
  findings are consistent with previous literature,
  which suggests that negative first impressions
  are very salient and resistant to change. They
  may have a very large influence on the
  reputations and demonstrate the importance of
  social skills programs targeting initial
  interactions with unfamiliar people.

Results

• To determine the degree that interpersonal
  behaviors shaped initial impressions and social
  status of youth, the 26 items were entered into a
  step-wise multiple regression. R2 values listed
  in Table 1 demonstrate the predictive ability of
  the regression models by day and social status.
• For Day 1 data, the models for rejected and
  ignored status had strong predictive value
  models for popular and good friend status had
  weaker predictive value.
• Day 3 and Day 5 models across all four statuses
  show a decrease in the strength of predictive
  ability.

• In order to examine how initial impressions
  influence peer status after 5 days of extensive
  contact between participants at the camp, rank
  scores were calculated for all youth. Higher
  rankings correspond to the youth who were most
  often rated by peers as being rejected, ignored,
  popular, or a good friend. As a result, each
  youth had a rank score for each of the four
  social statuses between 1 and 20 (number of
  participants) for each day. Table 3 indicates
  that the four most rejected and four most ignored
  adolescents on day 1 remained the four most
  rejected and four most ignored on day 5. The data
  reported for the four most popular and good
  friend participants reveal that their rankings
  changed from day 1 to day 5. These findings
  demonstrate the costs of poor first impressions
  as they tend to be stable across time.

• Limitations
• Youth filled out scales only on the 1st, 3rd,
  and 5th day of the program due to the time each
  scale took to complete. It is possible that
  youth may have become bored or tired and rushed
  through scales making data from Day 3 and 5 less
  reliable. Reducing the length of scales could
  allow ratings scales to be completed on more
  days, and reduce fatigue. Nevertheless, there is
  evidence that participants attended to the
  questions even after multiple administrations
  because scores on measures of familiarity with
  other participants increased as expected over the
  course of the week.
• Future Directions
• Since first impressions appear to be a strong
  factor in the development and maintenance of
  negative social statuses, having programs that
  target specific behaviors leading to labels of
  rejected or ignored may afford young adolescents
  with the necessary skills to reduce the risk of
  first impressions that lead to persistent
  negative social statuses.

This research was supported by funds from the
Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation and the
Alvin V. Baird Attention and Learning
Disabilities Center.