Impulse control and aggressive response generation as predictors of aggressive behaviour in children with mild intellectual disabilities and borderline intelligence.
Check both poor impulse control and angry problem-solving habits when evaluating aggression risk in children with mild intellectual disability.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team looked at two thinking skills in children with mild intellectual disability. One skill was stopping an urge (impulse control). The other was making angry plans when upset (aggressive response generation).
They asked whether each skill, by itself, predicts real-life hitting, kicking, or yelling. Kids took short tests and teachers filled out behavior forms.
What they found
Poor impulse control raised the risk of aggression. So did the habit of thinking up angry solutions. Each factor mattered on its own.
Knowing both scores gave a clearer picture than either alone.
How this fits with other research
van Nieuwenhuijzen et al. (2009) found the same angry-planning link in the same year. Their kids lived in either group homes or regular schools, showing the pattern holds across settings.
Whitehouse et al. (2014) later showed that weak impulse control also predicts poor daily-living skills, not just aggression. The trouble with stopping oneself spreads to many life areas.
Madden et al. (2003) seems to clash: adults with mild ID who committed sexual offenses were less impulsive, not more. The key difference is offense type. Sexual offending appears planned, while everyday aggression is often a sudden burst. The studies do not contradict; they simply look at different behaviors.
Why it matters
When you assess a child with mild ID, score both impulse control and angry problem-solving. Use simple stop-signal games and ask what the child would do if a peer took a toy. Track each score separately in your report. Targeting both skills—self-control drills and social problem-solving lessons—may cut aggression better than either alone.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: A growing interest exists in mechanisms involved in behaviour problems in children with mild intellectual disabilities and borderline intelligence (MID/BI). Social problem solving difficulties have been found to be an explanatory mechanism for aggressive behaviour in these children. However, recently a discrepancy was found between automatic and reflective responding in social situations. We hypothesise that low impulse control and aggressive social problem solving strategies together may explain mechanisms involved in aggressive behaviour by children with MID/BI. METHOD: In a clinical sample of 130 children with MID/BI receiving intramural treatment, main, moderating and mediating effects of impulse control and aggressive response generation on aggressive behaviour were examined by conducting hierarchical linear multiple regression analyses. RESULTS: Independent main effects of both impulse control and aggressive response generation on aggressive behaviour were found. Results indicated that low impulse control and aggressive response generation each explain unique variance in aggressive behaviour. CONCLUSIONS: As this study is the first that has shown both impulse control and aggressive response generation to be important predictors for aggressive behaviour in children with MID/BI, future research should further examine the nature of relations between low impulse control and social problem solving.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2009 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2008.01112.x