Correlated and Coupled Within-Person Change in Emotional and Behavior Disturbance in Individuals with Intellectual Disability

Authors

Scott M. Hofer, University of Victoria
Kylie M. Gray, Monash University
Andrea M. Piccinin, University of Victoria
Andrew Mackinnon, University of Melbourne
Daniel E. Bontempo, Oregon State University
Stewart L. Enfield, University of Sydney
Lesa Hoffman, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Trevor Parmenter, University of Sydney
Bruce J. Tonge, Monash University

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

9-2009

Citation

AJIDD (September 2009) 114(5): 307-321. DOI: 10.1352/1944-7558-114.5.307.

Comments

Manuscript copy. Copyright 2009, American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Used by permission.

Abstract

Individual change and variation in emotional/behavioral disturbance in children and adolescents with intellectual disability has received little empirical investigation. Based on 11 years of longitudinal data from the Australian Child to Adult Development Study, we report associations among individual differences in level, rate of change, and occasion-specific variation across subscales of theDevelopmental Behavior Checklist (DBC) with 506 participants who had intellectual disability and were ages 5 to 19 years at study entry. Correlations among the five DBC subscales ranged from .43 to .66 for level, .43 to .88 for rate of change, and .31 to .61 for occasion-specific variation, with the highest correlations observed consistently between disruptive, self-absorbed, and communication disturbance behaviors. These interdependencies among dimensions of emotional/behavioral disturbance provide insight into the developmental dynamics of psychopathology from childhood through young adulthood.