Adaptive Social learning in Typical and Atypical Developing Adolescents

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Summary - Social learning in adolescents with conduct problemsAdolescents with conduct problems (CP) present severe behavioural problems and have difficulties in adjusting to social norms. Children and adolescents with CP appear to process social information in an atypical way. Hostile attribution biases, lack of empathy, and both under- and over-reactivity to emotional facial expressions have been observed in this population. Although the social information processing profiles of children and adolescents with CP may appear atypical when compared with peers of the same age, it is conceivable that their cognitive/affective profiles match life histories that have set strong priors, which hamper adaptive social learning. In other words, compared with the mainstream population, children and adolescents with CP may have adapted to different social environments (more chaotic and unpredictable, with untrustworthy adults) and whilst their social learning appears maladaptive to the society at large, it may match the environment in which they grew up. It is also of note that children and adolescents with CP are a heterogeneous population, with some seemingly fearless and lacking in empathy (those with high callous-unemotional traits; high-CU) and others very emotionally labile (those with low callous-unemotional traits; low-CU). Such traits may further constrain individual social learning during development. In short, it is not clear how the seeming disregard for social norms may constrain further social learning in individuals with CP. It is also unclear to what extent childhood environment and child specific traits account for social learning patterns of CP adolescents. The current study has been set up to investigate these questions.