Poster #132 - Attachment Disorders in Samples of Typically Developing School-Aged Children and Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Attachment Disorders (AD), namely Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder (DSED), are psychiatric disorder that children may develop as a result of severe early adversity (Zeanah & Gleason, 2015). Currently, there is no AD measure that underwent a full validation process with data from the normative population, which would allow establishing norms for a clinical use. To provide norms for the Early TRAuma-related Disorders Questionnaire (ETRAD-Q; Monette, 2016), a new questionnaire based of the latest DSM-5 criteria, this study reports data collected on various school-age children of the general population. The objectives were twofold: 1) to examine, within a subset of typically developing children (TDC), whether child age and sex were associated with the RAD and DSED scales of the ETRAD-Q. 2) to examine whether these two scales can distinguish TDC children from those with an Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) or an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), two groups of the population likely to show high levels of DSED and RAD symptoms (Davidson et al., 2015; Follan et al., 2011).

Method. 580 school-aged children (M age = 7.97, SD = 2.00) recruited in regular elementary schools and their primary caregiver participated to the study. The sample was divided in three subsamples: 1) TDC (n= 464); 2) ADHD (n=99); and 3) ASD (n=17). Primary caregivers (70% mother, 30% father) completed a sociodemographic questionnaire (child age and sex, current psychiatric diagnosis) and the ETRAD-Q assessing RAD (25 items) and DSED (16 items).

Results and conclusion. For TDC (n=464), analyses indicated that: 1) the RAD scale is not associated with child age or sex; 2) the DSED scale is associated with child age (r = -.19, p < .01), but not with child sex, indicating that TDC display less DSED symptoms as they grow older. To better understand these results, a oneway ANOVA, with a four-age group (5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12) variable and Scheffe post-hoc tests, revealed that younger children (5-6 years old group) showed higher DSED symptoms than older children (11-12 years-old group; F (3, 460) = 4.37, p < .01, see figure 1). These results suggest that distinct sets of norms should be developed based on age groups.

Oneway ANOVAs and Scheffe post hoc tests with the three subsamples (see figure 2) showed for the RAD scale that : 1) ASD children had more RAD symptoms than TDC (Cohen's d = 1.50) and ADHD children (Cohen's d = .83), and 2) ADHD children had more RAD symptoms than TDC children (Cohen's d = .69). For the DSED scale, ASD and ADHD children showed similar and higher levels of DSED than that of TDC children (Cohen's d = .59 and 1.00, respectively). These moderate to large effect sizes, suggest that groups of children with ASD and ADHD should be treated separately as they differ to a large extent from the TDC group.

Authors

• Maude Archambault, Université du Québec à Montréal
  Presenting Author

• Sebastien Monette, UQAM
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chantal Cyr, University of Quebec at Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author

• Miguel T. Terradas, Université de Sherbrooke
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sophie Couture, Université de Montréal
  Non-Presenting Author