Effects of Social Metacognitive Training for Enhancing Overt Behavior in Learning Disabled and Low Achieving Delinquents

Abstract

The efficacy of social metacognitive training focusing on impulse control, metacognitive awareness, and metacognitive control for enhancing overt social adjustment in delinquent youth was examined. Learning disabled (LD, n = 34) and low-achieving (NLD, n = 34) incarcerated delinquents (16 to 19 years) were assigned randomly to social metacognitive training, attention control or test-only control groups. Institutional staff and subjects were blind to both experimental conditions and variable measures. Compared to subjects in attention and test-only control conditions, those given metacognitive training showed significant improvements in (a) quantity of negative behavior reports, (b) staff ratings on rehabilitation achievement, and (c) institutional living unit phase level promotions. Although both LD and NLD delinquents who received cognitive training significantly improved their behavior, on every variable the LD group had a greater proportion of subjects improve. Parallel improvement in metacognitive skills and significant correlations between social metacognitive scores and indicators of effective behavior support the notion that social metacognition was the “mechanism” of treatment and that social metacognition mediates overt social behavior in novel contexts without specific cueing from the environment. Results are interpreted within the context of a series of studies testing the hypothesis that social metacognitive deficits increase risk for maladaptive behavior, including delinquency, in LD youth.

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