Attributional Style and Depression in Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome

Abstract

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 the 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 behavior interventions.