Impact of coercive tactics on the decision-making of adolescents with intellectual disabilities.
Teens with ID understand danger facts yet still give in when threatened, so you must drill threat-specific refusal, not just teach rules.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked teens with intellectual disability to pick the safest choice in short stories.
Some stories added a threat (“Do this or I’ll hurt you”). Others used a lure (“Come on, it’ll be fun”). A third set had no pressure.
After each story the teens explained what they would do and why.
What they found
Without pressure the teens picked the safe choice only about half the time.
Threats made safe choices drop even lower. Surprisingly, the teens could repeat the story facts best when a threat was used.
Knowing the facts did not help them act on them when they felt scared.
How this fits with other research
Khemka et al. (2016) extends this worry. They taught the same age group a class called PEER-DM and the teens got much better at saying no to peer pressure.
The 2009 paper shows the threat problem; the 2016 paper shows the fix. Together they say: practice saying no in class, not just talking about it.
Andrews et al. (2024) adds that autistic teens also feel left out of service choices. All three studies agree: teens with developmental delays need real chances to rehearse decisions, not just hear rules.
Why it matters
You can add short role-plays that use real threats (“Give me your money or else”) into safety lessons. Let the learner practice loud “No, go away” responses until it is easy. Check that they can say the words, not just nod at the facts.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: High rates of victimization have raised concerns about the ability of adolescents with intellectual disabilities (ID) to avoid and escape from harmful situations and to make decisions in their own best interest. The present study was designed to assess the impact of specific coercive tactics on the decision-making of adolescents with ID. METHOD: Forty-eight adolescents with ID participated in the study. They were asked to respond to a series of brief vignettes depicting equal numbers of situations involving coercion with a lure, coercion with a threat, and no specific coercive tactic. Performance was assessed in terms of independent, prevention-focused decisions, reporting decisions and responses to fact and inference comprehension questions. RESULTS: Overall, participants suggested independent, prevention-focused decisions only about half the time. They were more likely to suggest independent, prevention-focused decisions in situations with no specific coercive tactic or coercion with a lure than in situations involving a threat. However, reporting decisions were more likely in situations involving coercion with a threat than in the other two conditions and both fact and inference comprehension were best in situations involving coercion with a threat. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicated that adolescents with ID are not well-prepared to handle situations on their own that involve coercion, especially coercion with a threat. Because comprehension did not appear to be a key source of the decision-making difficulty in this study, further research is needed to examine all aspects of the decision-making process as a basis for the design of effective interventions.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2009 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01152.x