Etiology and Relationships to Developmental Disabilities

This chapter reviews a variety of developmental disabilities and psychological disorders that children experience, first describing the relevant symptoms of these disorders and second attempting to understand how social skills are related to the disorder. One theme throughout this chapter is the question of whether social skills deficits can be understood etiologically or whether these deficits are rather a behavioral consequence of a disorder. Specifically, social skills deficits are often either a diagnostic criterion of a particular disorder or a direct consequence of the disorder itself (or both). As such, the social skills deficits co-occur with the disorder. However, in some cases there is evidence to suggest that a prior social skills deficit precedes the manifestation of the disorder and therefore is part of the etiology of the disorder. This is similar to the perennial chicken and the egg question but reframed as, which came first, the disorder or the social skills deficit