Cognitive and social correlates of DSM-III disorders in preadolescent children

The relationships between some cognitive and social measures and the major syndromes found in a large preadolescent sample of children from the general population are described. The measures discriminated between disorder-no disorder for most variables examined and between the broad groups of externalizing and internalizing disorders, but not between individual diagnostic categories. An important exception was that ADDH and conduct disorder occurring as single disorders could be distinguished, but the frequent comorbidity of these and other disorders complicated many between-group comparisons.