General and Maladaptive Personality Dimensions in Pediatric Obsessive–Compulsive Symptoms

Abstract

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic and impairing clinical disorder in childhood, often characterized by a heterogeneous symptomatic profile and high co-occurrence with other disorders. The present study introduces a new perspective on the description of OCD symptoms in youth, and empirically examines the value of a personality framework (e.g. Five Factor of Personality; FFM) for understanding early OCD symptomatology in a referred sample of 274 children and adolescents, relying on age-specific measures of general and maladaptive personality. Differences in general and maladaptive personality traits for high versus low-scoring children and adolescents on the Obsessive-Compulsive Scale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL-OCS) were explored. The discriminant validity of both higher-and lower-order personality traits was supported, showing that high CBCL-OCS scorers are characterized by specific personality features ranging from adaptive to pathological, especially in terms of Conscientiousness. In addition, personality traits contributed to the accurate classification of high- versus low-scorers on the CBCL-OCS. Implications for clinical practice and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Assessing maladaptive traits in youth: An English-language version of the Dimensional Personality Symptom Itempool.

“…The DIPSI is a taxonomy and assessment tool that addresses the need for age-appropriate trait measures of childhood PD precursors (Clark, 2007; Tackett et al, 2014). Previous studies underscored the reliability and validity of the original Flemish DIPSI to describe early manifestations and development of maladaptive personality traits (e.g., Aelterman et al, 2011; Decuyper et al, 2011). The present research corroborates this established evidence by investigating various psychometric properties of the English version of the DIPSI, its structural similarity with the originally proposed structure, its convergent and divergent validity with psychopathology, as well as its similarity in terms of correlation patterns with general manifestations of childhood psychopathology.…”

“…The availability of a measure specifically designed to assess pathological personality traits in younger age in a comprehensive way, stimulated the study of underlying maladaptive trait precursors in psychopathology at a young age (De Fruyt & De Clercq, 2014). These recent studies have indicated that DIPSI traits can be used to reliably and validly describe callous-unemotional features (Decuyper, De Bolle, De Fruyt, & De Clercq, 2011), obsessive–compulsive symptoms (Aelterman, De Clercq, De Bolle, & De Fruyt, 2011), autism spectrum symptoms (De Clercq et al, 2010), and borderline related pathology (De Clercq, Decuyper, & De Caluwé, 2014) in younger age groups. These recently published studies on the link between childhood antecedents of personality pathology and psychopathology underscore the construct and discriminant validity of the original Flemish DIPSI measure.…”

The Importance of Item Wording

“…Other authors have noted that there is a maladaptive side to conscientiousness that is often not tapped by existing measures, and as a result, the true degree of association between the conscientiousness construct and compulsive personality dysfunction has been underestimated in empirical research using these conscientiousness measures (see Samuel & Gore, 2012). Support for this position was provided by Aelterman, De Clercq, De Bolle, and De Fruyt (2011) in their research with a large sample of children and adolescents. They showed that the identification of obsessivecompulsive tendencies improved only when scales believed to reflect maladaptive conscientiousness (including a Perfectionism subscale) were taken into account.…”

Maladaptive Variants of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness

“…Such a finding was more recently supported from a developmental perspective by Aelterman, De Clercq, De Bolle, and De Fruyt () using a sample of children and adolescents with obsessive‐compulsive symptoms. They found that although a measure assessing the general range of Conscientiousness was not particularly successful at differentiating high‐ and low‐symptom groups, the more specific and maladaptive traits assessed by a second measure yielded significant and large differences.…”