Validity of Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome with Mother and Father Ratings of Brazilian Children: Replication of Northern Hemisphere Findings in South America.

Abstract

Although the Child and Adolescent Behavior Inventory (CABI) cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS) scale has demonstrated validity relative to the CABI attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-inattention (ADHD-IN) scale with parent ratings of youth from North America, Europe, East Asia, and Central Asia, no study has evaluated the validity of the 15 symptom CDS scale with children from South America. Our purpose was to examine for the first time the validity of the CABI CDS scale with Brazilian children. Latent variable modeling procedures were used to examine the validity of CDS scores. Mothers and fathers completed measures of CDS, ADHD-IN, ADHD-hyperactivity/impulsivity (HI), anxiety, depression, and academic impairment on 366 Brazilian children (M_age = 8.64, SD_age = 1.39, 53.3% females). First, the CDS symptoms showed strong internal validity with the ADHD-IN symptoms. Second, within and across sources, ADHD-IN showed stronger first-order and unique associations than CDS with ADHD-HI, whereas CDS, especially across sources, showed stronger first-order and unique associations than ADHD-IN with anxiety and depression. CDS and ADHD-IN were similarly associated with academic impairment. This study is the first to support the validity of CABI CDS scores with Brazilian children, thus replicating the findings in North America, Europe, East Asia, and the Central Asia in South America.