Attributional Style and Depression in Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome

G.P Barnhill and B. Smith-Myles, Journal of Positive Behaviour Interventions, Volume 3, No 3, Summer 2001, Pages 175 - 182.

Despite research indicating that adolescents with Asperger Syndrome are prone to depression, there is no research investigating the attributions of these individuals and the possibility of a learned helplessness attributional style that may predispose these persons to depression or to maintain depressive symptoms. This study investigated the relationship between level of depressive symptoms and general attributional or explanatory style in 33 adolescents with Asperger Syndrome. Support was found for the reformulated theory of learned helplessness in adolescents with Asperger Syndrome. The more depressive symptoms the adolescents reported, the more adolescents explained negative events by internal, stable, and global causes. One third of the participants obtained scores on the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire composite for positive events that are considered to be suggestive of a very pessimistic, failure prone style. However, only 9% of the participants rated themselves as having substantially more depressive symptoms than peers on the Children's Depression Inventory. Given that 70% of the participants were taking medication for depression, these findings may suggest that the medication controlled depressive symptoms but did not affect the maladaptive attributional style. Findings of the study are discussed relative to implications for practitioners in designing positive behaviour interventions.

Suicidal ideation and gestures in children and adolescents with developmental disabilities, such as Asperger Syndrome and nonverbal learning disabilities is an understudied phenomenon. Yet research has indicated that adolescents and young adults with Asperger Syndrome are prone to depression and anxiety. Likewise, there is an under appreciation of the presence of developmental disabilities, including Asperger Syndrome, in individuals who seek assistance for psychiatric difficulties such as depression and anxiety. In fact, Tantam reported that some older persons were not diagnosed as having Asperger Syndrome until a serious crisis, such as a suicide attempt or involvement with the legal system, occurred and a diagnostician reviewed the individual's developmental history. All cognitive theories of depression propose that depression is, in part, the consequence of negative beliefs and maladaptive information processing, and different theories focus on different aspects of cognition. One cognitive theory that has been researched extensively is the reformulated learned helplessness model. Seligman (1975) defined helplessness as "the physiological state that frequently results when events are uncontrollable". The individual learns that responding is independent of reinforcement and comes to believe that action is futile. The reformulated theory of learned helplessness hypothesises that when people perceive lack of control and find themselves helpless, they implicitly or explicitly ask why they are helpless. The casual attributions they make regarding this lack of control influence whether the helplessness entails self-esteem and generalises across situations and time. The reformulated learned helplessness theory proposes the presence of individual differences in attributional styles and hypothesises that certain attributional styles make an individual more vulnerable than others to depression. This study was designed to investigate general attributional or explanatory style and level of depression in individuals between 12 and 18 years of age who have been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.

The most salient finding of this study was the significant relationship between attributional style and depression. This was consistent across IQ and age. Specifically, support was found for the reformulated theory of learned helplessness with adolescents diagnosed as having Asperger Syndrome. The participants seemed to blame themselves for a negative event or outcome, considered the cause to be consistent over time, and also generalised the cause across situations. Conversely, the fewer depressive symptoms participants reported, the less they attributed negative events to internal, stable, and global reasons. In other words, adolescents who reported the least depressive symptoms also attributed negative events to more external, unstable, and specific causes. This more adaptive attributional style suggests that they did not blame themselves for the negative event, considered the cause to vary over time, and specified the cause to that particular situation rather than to all situations. The results of this study point to strong implications for the use of positive behaviour supports for children and youth with Asperger Syndrome. Specifically, individuals with this exceptionality require comprehensive interventions that are designed to have meaningful long-term outcomes with social validity. These interventions should directly address the issues identified in this study: perceived lack of control, poor self-esteem, assumption of responsibility for negative events, an idea that no one specific reason may account for problems, and hopelessness - the feeling of being doomed for failure.

Researchers have found that reattribution training is a successful intervention strategy with individuals who displayed a learned helplessness style related to academic and social failures. Attribution retraining is a cognitive training approach explicitly designed to change maladaptive attributions. Several strategies suggested by Williams (1995) directed at addressing several of the characteristics typical of individuals with Asperger Syndrome - such as poor concentration, emotional vulnerability, and academic difficulties - are recommended to assist the individual in persisting at tasks perceived to be difficult.