A Scoping Review of Research on Attributes of Social Cognition Impairment among Children with Disruptive Behaviours

Abstract

Background: Children's social cognition, an ability to understand and infer the thoughts and feelings of others influences how they develop a unique view of the world. Higher social cognitive capacities are associated with better prosocial skills whereas difficulties in understanding and thinking about others’ mental states can lead to disruptive social functioning and increase the risk of major mental health problems. Impairment in the development of social cognition is considered to be the most important reason behind a child’s disruptive behaviour. Therefore, this paper aimed to understand different factors involved with disrupted social cognition which results in disruptive behaviour in children. Methods: The review was done by systematically using the keywords such as social cognition AND disruptive children OR anger children OR externalizing disorders OR conduct disorder and the timeline selected was from 2008 to 2023. Articles published on PubMed and Google Scholar were included in the study. The PRISMA was followed for reporting the systematic review. Results: The contribution of biological factors involving the role of callous-unemotional trait, disturbed neuropsychological processes, imbalance in the behavioural regulation system, hostile parenting, poor attachment patterns and poor environmental factors were considered as major causes of anger among children. Conclusions: The paper concludes that, although considerable progress has been made in understanding this topic, there is a need to further refine our conceptualisation of the problem to develop an effective treatment plan for dealing with children with disruptive behaviour.

Keywords

• biological
• psychological
• social cognition
• disruptive behaviour