Impact of coercive tactics on the decision-making of adolescents with intellectual disabilities.

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.

Increasing independent decision-making skills of women with mental retardation in simulated interpersonal situations of abuse.

The effectiveness of two decision-making training approaches in increasing independent decision-making skills of 36 women with mild mental retardation in response to hypothetical social interpersonal situations involving abuse was evaluated. Participants were randomly assigned to a control or one of two training conditions (a decision-making training approach that either addressed both cognitive and motivational aspects of decision-making or included only instruction on the cognitive aspect of decision-making). Although both approaches were effective relative to a control condition, the combined cognitive and motivational training approach was superior to the cognitive only training approach. The superiority of this approach was also reflected on a verbally presented generalization task requiring participants to respond to a decision-making situation involving abuse from their own perspective and on a locus of control scale that measured perceptions of control.

Decision-making by adults with mental retardation in simulated situations of abuse.

The ability of women and men with mental retardation to suggest prevention-focused decisions in response to simulated social interpersonal situations of abuse was investigated. Decision-making performance across three types of abusive situations (physical, sexual, psychological/verbal) was examined. Participants were able to suggest direct prevention-focused decisions aimed at resisting or stopping abuse 45% of the time and other-dependent prevention-focused decisions in the form of reporting 20% of the time. Prevention-focused decision-making was higher in situations of physical abuse (59%) than in situations of sexual (51%) or psychological/verbal abuse (26%). Women and men did not differ significantly in their decision-making responses.

A closer look at interpersonal decision-making in adults with and without mental retardation.

Two experiments were conducted to examine the interpersonal decision-making performance of women and men with and without mental retardation. In Experiment 1, adults with mental retardation listened to either short or long vignettes depicting situations in which a female or male protagonist was faced with a decision involving either a peer or authority figure. In Experiment 2, adults without mental retardation were presented with long versions of the vignettes. As expected, the task was considerably more difficult for the participants with mental retardation, possibly because of differences in their ability to fully comprehend the social situations. Women in both studies outperformed men. Results suggest that emotional and motivational factors may have contributed to these differences.