Knowledge Structures, Social Information Processing, and Children’s Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

Although a multitude of factors may be involved in the development of children's violent behavior, the actual aggressive act is preceded by a decision-making process that serves as the proximal control mechanism. The primary goal of this longitudinal study was to understand the nature of this proximal control mechanism involved in children's aggressive acts by focusing on two aspects of social cognitions: social information processing and stored knowledge (i.e., internal knowledge structures that are the latent memories of past events). It was hypothesized that: (1) children with hostile knowledge structures will display more biased patterns of aggressive social information processing than children whose knowledge structures are less hostile and negative; (2) children who display hostile knowledge structures will behave in chronically aggressive ways; and (3) the development of hostile knowledge structures and hostile patterns of social information processing contribute to the stability of aggressive behavior and thus partially mediate the relation between early and later aggressive behavior. 585 boys and girls (19% African-American) were followed from kindergarten through eighth grade. Results from this investigation support the hypotheses and are discussed in terms of the significance of the inclusion of knowledge structures in our theories of the mental processes involved in children's violent behaviour. KeywordsKnowledge structures; aggression; social-information processing There can be little doubt that severe aggressive behavior is a multiply determined phenomenon with many contributing factors. These can include genetic, pre-and perinatal, neurological, hormonal, physiological trauma, or other biological anomalies, as well as ecological, cognitive, and social variables. Although these factors may predispose an individual to behave violently, any specific display of aggression must have a proximal control mechanism that accounts for NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptSoc Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 December 14. Published in final edited form as:Soc Dev. 1999 ; 8(2): 220-235. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript each specific act of aggression at a particular moment. With the possible exception of hallucinogenically induced rage, the moment before an aggressive act is undertaken, a decision (either conscious or unconscious) is made to strike out. It is this decision-making process that serves as the proximal control for specific acts of aggression (Dodge, 1986;Ladd & Mize, 1983;Rubin & Krasnor, 1986). Online decision-making processes, in turn, may be guided by knowledge structures that are acquired in experience and are organized in long-term memory. These structures are internal mental representations which have been derived from memories of past experiences and are a major determinant of how people represent, categorize, and interpret ongoing social events (Higgins, 1990;Murphy & Medin, 1985;Stromquist & Strauman, 1991). Various paradigms hav...

A Longitudinal Rejection Sensitivity Model of Depression and Aggression: Unique Roles of Anxiety, Anger, Blame, Withdrawal and Retribution

“…Nevertheless, some research suggests links between RS angry, external attributions for rejection, retribution and aggression. For example, (1) young people who tend to make external attributions for social failures are reported by others to be more aggressive (Guerra et al 2004), (2) child and adolescent beliefs about others as hostile is associated with more aggressive behavior (Burks et al 1999), (3) individuals who make external attributions for failure report more anger (Weiner and Graham 1984), and (4) aggressive children are more likely than withdrawn children to make other-blame attributions (Burgess et al 2006). These associations suggest that angry RS and blaming others for rejection would each be correlates of increasing aggressive behavior over time and that blaming others for rejection might also prompt even more angry expectations of rejection over time.…”

“…Research has shown that adolescents' elevated depressive affect is linked to later isolation and withdrawal from social relationships (Nolen-Hoeksema et al 1986;Prinstein et al 2005). Also, other research has shown that adolescents with a history of aggressive behavior are more likely to respond with retribution and even more aggression when they are threatened by rejection (Burks et al 1999;Guerra et al 2004). These findings suggest that adolescents who report more depressive symptoms or aggression at T1 would report responding to rejection threat with withdrawal and retribution at T2, respectively, at the same time that T2 responses might be associated with later (T3) depressive symptoms and aggressive behavior with peers.…”

Children's Trait and Emotion Attributions in Socially Ambiguous and Unambiguous Situations

“…Researchers have noted that the way in which children interpret social events depends not only on aspects of online processing that occur when a child experiences social situations directly, but also their general representations about social interactions (e.g., Burks, Laird, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1999), particularly in the context of ambiguous social events. For example, children who have been rebuffed by peers in the past may be more likely to assume that a hypothetical ambiguous behavior (e.g., a peer walking past another peer without saying hello) is intentionally negative.…”

Evaluation eines Anti-Aggressivitäts-Trainings bei antisozialen Jugendlichen

“…streiten viel -kommen gut miteinander zurecht), wurde bei den Jugendlichen die Tendenz erhoben, bei der Beschreibung von Personen auf feindliche Attribute zu fokussieren ("schema typicality"; SalzerBurks, Laird, & Dodge, 1999). Die Beschreibungen sollen kognitive Schemata für die Realität repräsentieren.…”

“…bei der Vorgabe eines Zieles generiert werden (Was würdest Du tun, um Dich hinsetzen zu können?) (nach Salzer-Burks et al, 1999). Die Fragen wurden im offenen Antwortformat erhoben, die Antworten anschließend kodiert.…”