Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD) are highly comorbid, with symptoms that share some similarities. The evidence-based diagnostic process for these disorders includes ratings from adults in the child’s life to assess behavior across settings, so it is important to understand how these raters think about potentially overlapping symptoms. Researchers have identified negative halo effects in ratings of ADHD and ODD symptoms, but ratings of CD have not been examined in these prior studies. Thus, the current study extended past research to examine negative halo effects in parent ratings of the predominantly hyperactive-impulsive presentation of ADHD (i.e., ADHD/HI), ODD, and CD. Parent participants read one of four vignettes that portrayed an 11-year-old boy displaying symptoms of ADHD/HI, ODD, CD, or typical development, and then completed a disruptive behavior scale. The general trend we found was that the presence of a relatively more severe disorder (i.e., CD) artificially inflated ratings of - or showed a negative halo effect for - the relatively less severe disorder (i.e., ADHD/HI), but with some nuance as discussed in the paper. These findings explain and validate how important it is that clinicians conduct evidence-based psychological assessments to decrease the chance of misdiagnosis.

注意缺陷/多动障碍（ADHD），对立违抗性障碍（ODD）和品行障碍（CD）高度合并，其症状具有一些相似之处。这些疾病的循证诊断过程包括对儿童一生中成人的评分，以评估各种情况下的行为，因此了解这些评分者如何考虑潜在的重叠症状非常重要。研究人员发现负面的光环效应在ADHD和ODD症状的分级中，CD的分级尚未在这些先前的研究中进行过检查。因此，当前的研究扩展了过去的研究，以检查对多动症（即ADHD / HI），ODD和CD为主的过度活跃冲动表现的父母等级的负面光环效应。家长参加者阅读了四个插图，其中四个描绘了一个11岁男孩表现出ADHD / HI，ODD，CD或典型发育的症状，然后完成了破坏性行为量表。我们发现的总体趋势是，存在相对较严重的疾病（例如，ADHD / HI）的相对较严重的疾病（例如CD）的人为抬高了评级-或显示了相对较不严重的疾病（例如，ADHD / HI）的负晕效应如本文所述。