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This study examined the contribution of attachment security and emotion regulation (ER) to the explanation of social information processing (SIP) in middle childhood boys with learning disabilities (LD) and without LD matched on age and grade level. Children analyzed four social vignettes using Dodge's SIP model and completed the Kerns security scale and the children's self-control scale. Study results demonstrated major difficulties in SIP, lower attachment security, and less ER in children with LD compared to children without LD. Attachment as well as the interaction between attachment and ER emerged as important contributors to most SIP steps, suggesting that children with higher security who also have better ER skills will have better SIP capabilities along the different steps, beyond group inclusion. Results were discussed in terms of practical and clinical implications regarding the importance of mother-child attachment and ER skills for social cognitive capabilities in children with LD.
Keywords: social-emotional; social information processing; learning disabilities
The purpose of the current study was to examine the contribution of attachment security and emotion regulation (ER) to the explanation of social information processing (SIP) in middle childhood boys with and without learning disabilities (LD). SIP is a major component of children's social competence that enables them to make sense of their social world, specifically regarding their social interactions within this world (Dodge, 1986; Gifford-Smith & Rabiner, 2004; Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000). SIP offers a detailed model of how children process and interpret cues in social situations and arrive at a behavioral or emotional decision regarding these cues (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge, 1986). As a social cognitive capability, SIP can be considered one of the most challenging domains for children with LD in that it draws together their cognitive difficulties (e.g., attention, memory, reasoning, focusing, processing information; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) and their social-emotional difficulties (e.g., limited emotion recognition skills, poor social and emotion understanding, peer rejection; Bauminger, Schorr-Edelsztein, & Morash, 2005; Frederickson & Furman, 2001; Nabuzoka & Smith, 1993; Tur-Kaspa, 2002). However, among children with LD, SIP processes have been more extensively examined than have the related emotional processes such as attachment or ER (Arthur, 2003; Bryan, Burstein, & Ergul, 2004).
The core unit of SIP models includes six on-line active steps: (1) encoding social cues...