Symposia
Transdiagnostic
Julia D. McQuade, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
Amherst College
Amherst, Massachusetts
Background: Emotion dysregulation is a common impairment in adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) that may explain heterogeneity in presentations (Bunford et al., 2018; Yue et al., 2022). However, most research focuses on dysregulation of negative emotions (e.g., anger) without consideration of positive emotions (e.g., happiness). Emerging research suggests that impulsivity when experiencing positive emotions may also characterize ADHD (Gueren et al., 2021); positive emotion impulsivity may undermine decision-making and increase approach behaviors (Cynders & Smith, 2008) and has been linked to antisocial behavior in non-ADHD samples (Maneiro et al., 2017; Vogel et al., 2019; Stautz & Cooper, 2014). This study is the first to examine if positive emotion impulsivity serves as a vulnerability that exacerbates antisocial behaviors in adolescents with ADHD.
Methods: Participants were adolescents (M= 16.12 years; n = 84), 42% with full/subthreshold ADHD, 56% female. Parents completed ratings of the adolescent’s ADHD, Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and conduct disorder (CD) symptoms (DBD Rating Scale; Pelham et al., 1992). Adolescents completed self-reports of positive emotion impulsivity (DERS-Positive, Weiss et al., 2015), deviant peer affiliation (Dishion, et al., 1991) and peer aggression (Little, et al., 2003); negative emotion impulsivity (DERS, Gratz & Roemer, 2004) was assessed as a covariate.
Results: Positive emotion impulsivity was not significantly associated with ADHD symptoms. However, regressions indicated that greater positive emotion impulsivity significantly predicted greater deviant peer affiliation, controlling for ADHD symptoms and negative emotion impulsivity. Positive emotion impulsivity also significantly moderated the effect of ADHD symptoms on CD symptoms, ODD symptoms, and peer aggression; interaction plots indicted that youth were highest in CD, ODD, or aggression when they had high ADHD symptom levels and were high in positive emotion impulsivity.
Conclusions: Dysregulation in positive emotions should be assessed in youth with ADHD and may exacerbate engagement in antisocial behavior. ADHD treatment of emotion dysregulation may also need to focus on impulsivity in the context of positive emotions, which could have downstream effects on adolescent’s risk for antisocial behavior.