ATTRIBUTION STYLE AND INTERNAL STATE LEXICON: A COMPARISON BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY AND TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT

Current theories of intellectual disabilities underlie an approach centred on a more complete description of the development, known as “the whole child approach”, in which emphasis is placed on the reciprocal relationships between the cognitive and motivational dimensions which characterise development. In particular, subjects with intellectual disabilities, who have experienced repeated failures, may develop an attribution profile characterised by a bias towards primarily external causes. However the consideration of internal causes, such as effort and ability, requires the involvement of higher metacognitive and metalinguistic levels. Consequently, attribution to effort requires an awareness of one's own internal states. The aim of this study is to compare the attribution style and the knowledge of internal states words (physiological, emotional and cognitive) in adolescents with intellectual disability and typical development. Two groups consisting of 14 participants each were employed, an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group was composed by adolescents with intellectual disability. Participants in the control group were matched to the experimental Ss for mental age. All of the 24 participants were given an Attribution Test (Pepi and Alesi, 2001) and a Internal States Lexicon Test (Alesi and Pepi, 2005). The attribution test consisting of 14 items illustrating either everyday or school-related events in which the main character experiences either success or failure. The participants were asked to attribute the character's performance to one of five causes: ability; effort; help; luck; or task difficulty. On the whole, individuals with intellectual disability tend to attribute mainly performance to external causes such as the ease of the task. Moreover the results show a significant relationship between attribution style and knowledge of internal states words. In summary this study provide support for the planning of multidimensional training programs aimed at internalize the attribution style in subjects with intellectual disability.