Increased openness to external influences in adolescents with intellectual disability: Insights from an experimental study on social judgments

Abstract

Background: Making appropriate social judgments about one's peers helps avoid negative influences from peers, yet the cognitive and adaptive difficulties experienced by adolescents with an intellectual disability (ID) may create challenges in this regard.

Procedure: This study used a computer-based task to investigate how adolescents with ID (n = 34, M = 14.89 years, SD = 1.38) and comparison groups of chronological age-matched adolescents without ID (n = 34, M = 14.68, SD = 1.16) and mental age-matched children (n = 34, M = 7.88, SD = .62) make social judgments of photos of adolescents, and the degree to which they are influenced by non-social and social cues in performing this task.

Results: Analyses showed adolescents with ID made significantly more polarizing judgments and showed a positivity bias compared to adolescents without ID. This judgment pattern was similar to that of younger mental age-matched children. Adolescents with ID were also significantly more influenced by non-social cues and peer opinions than adolescents from the control group.

Implications: The results provide new perspectives for future research and support of adolescents with ID.

Keywords: Adolescence; Intellectual disability; Outerdirectedness; Peer influence; Polarization; Positivity bias; Social judgments.