The Impact of Context on the Development of Aggressive Behavior in Special Elementary School Children

Abstract

The role of context in the development of child aggression was studied. The effects of peer aggregation and group composition on aggression development in intervention contexts and classroom contexts were compared using 71 elementary school children. We hypothesized that, due to peer group effects, group‐trained children would benefit less from a social skills intervention program than individually trained children. We further hypothesized that children who transferred from special to regular education would show a change toward less aggression. This was hypothesized because of the relatively fewer accounts of negative peer‐group effects in regular education. The results show that the social skills intervention program did not have differential effects for group‐trained versus individually trained children. However, a change toward less aggression was found in children who transferred from special to regular education. We suggest that interventions toward decreasing child aggression might be more fruitful if the social context in which the children operate daily is considered.

School Outcomes of Aggressive‐Disruptive Children: Prediction From Kindergarten Risk Factors and Impact of the Fast Track Prevention Program

“…The increased aggression levels among retained students may reflect feelings of frustration regarding their decreased academic status, as well as increased peer relationship challenges faced by students after grade retention. Some research suggests that placement in special education classes is also linked to the escalation of aggressive behavior due to peer contagion (Visser, Kunnen, & Van Geert, 2010), although not all studies find this negative impact (White & Loeber, 2008). …”

Peer Influence in a School for Youth With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

“…Similarly, research within clinical settings suggests that the composition of group interventions is related to treatment outcomes and can predict either positive or negative behavior (e.g., Dodge et al, 2006). Thus, the social dynamics within EBD classrooms are not inherently deleterious, as other research has suggested (Müller, 2010;Visser et al, 2010). Rather, the influence of classroom behavior norms within EBD settings is similar to that within mainstream settings.…”

“…Group composition is closely related to behavior norms as the distribution of individuals with specific behaviors at the formation of a group influences norm development (Laninga-Wijnen et al, 2018;Müller, 2010). As such, the terms group composition and behavior norms have occasionally been used interchangeably (Visser et al, 2010). Research findings consistently demonstrate that as the ratio of antisocial/disruptive youth in an intervention group increases, the effectiveness of the intervention tends to decrease (Ang & Hughes, 2002;Macgowan & Wagner, 2005).…”

Distinguishing and Improving Mouse Behavior With Educational Computer Games in Young Children With Autistic Spectrum Disorder or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: An Executive Function‐Based Interpretation

“…The statistical procedures consisted of descriptive analyses performed in Microsoft Excel and permutation tests using Monte Carlo analysis (Good, 1999; Todman & Dugard, 2001) performed in Poptools (Hood, 2008). For a detailed example, see Visser, Kunnen, and Van Geert (2010). Each significance test was based on 1,000 simulations.…”