Does childhood positive self-perceptual bias mediate adolescent risky behavior in youth from the MTA study?

Abstract

Objective: This study's primary aim was to examine whether the positive self-perceptual bias present in many youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Hoza et al., 2004; Hoza, Pelham, Dobbs, Owens, & Pillow, 2002) mediates the relation of childhood ADHD status to later risky behaviors.

Method: Using a subset of children with ADHD and comparison children (n = 645) from the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD, we predicted that a positive bias in childhood would partially or fully mediate the relation between having ADHD and risky driving and sexual behaviors 8 years later.

Results: Results strongly supported this hypothesis for risky driving behavior but only provided limited support for risky sexual behavior.

Conclusions: Taken together, findings suggest that future research should explore whether self-perceptual bias may be a useful target of intervention for children with ADHD.