Early correlates of behavioural and emotional problems in children and adolescents with severe intellectual disabilities: A preliminary study

Research and theory on behaviour problems in children with intellectual disabilities (IDS) have tended to focus on maintaining variables and present correlates of disorder. The present study focused on potential early correlates of behavioural problems. The parents of 188 children attending schools for those with 'severe learning difficulties' completed the Developmental Behaviour Checklist (DBC), and a questionnaire asking for demographic details and information about present and early correlates (i.e. epilepsy and physical ability, and early developmental progress, early feeding problems and obstetric complications). Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to explore whether potential early correlates from infancy could add to the prediction of behaviour problems from established correlates and diagnostic variables. Potential early correlates across all of the DBC domains did not add significantly to the prediction of behaviour problems. However, there were effects of sex, physical ability and diagnostic categories. A number of methodological factors (i.e. poor response rate, focus only on severe ID and retrospective data collection) are discussed in terms of how they impact on the results. However, analyses of large samples such as that reported in the present study may still provide a useful addition to research on the early development of behaviour problems. Such data may help in the identification of children at risk who may benefit from early intervention.