User talk:Aapsych17/Evaluate an Article

Evaluating the article: Conduct disorder

Content: "Research performed on the impact of toddlers exposed to fear and distress shows that negative emotionality (fear) predicts toddlers' empathy-related response to distress. The findings support that if a caregiver is able to respond to infant cues, the toddler has a better ability to respond to fear and distress. If a child does not learn how to handle fear or distress the child will be more likely to lash out at other children."

The section above violates the guidelines that Wikipedia has about original research, or conclusions drawn by the writer rather than explicitly stated in the source. The Wikipedia user who wrote the section above conflates negative emotionality and fear, while the original article they cited conceptualizes negative emotionality as "proneness to fear, anger."

Further, the writer's claim that caregiver response to cues would lead to a toddler being better able to manage feelings of distress or fear; citing one study with these findings is not adequate to make this claim on Wikipedia. The same logic follows for the claim about a child's likelihood of "lash[ing] out." Additionally, Wikipedia recommends citing meta-analyses or review papers rather than individual studies like the one cited for the section above.

The "diagnosis" section of the article is located much further down than the "signs and symptoms" section. It would be appropriate to move up the "diagnosis" section to clarify that the presence of some of the symptoms does not mean a child has conduct disorder, as a diagnosis is based on DSM criteria.

The "developmental course" section of the article mentions the DSM-IV-TR; it would be appropriate to update this section to the DSM-5 information.

The "treatment" section of the article is very short and requires more development.

Tone

The article appears unbiased and does not over- or underrepresent a particular position.

Sources Some of the citations are individual studies, while the Wikipedia guidelines indicate that only articles with widely supported findings should be cited.

67.180.57.248 (talk) 23:15, 28 September 2020 (UTC)