Social Information-Processing Bases of Aggressive Behavior in Children

The ways that basic theories and findings in cognitive and social psychology (including attribution, decision-making, and information-processing theories) have been applied to the study of aggressive behavior problems in children are described. Following an overview of each of these theories, a social information-processing model of children's aggressive behavior is outlined. According to this model, a child's behavioral response to a problematic social stimulus is a function of five: steps of processing: encoding of social cues, interpretation of social cues, response search, response evaluation, and enactment. Skillful processing at each step is hypothesized to lead to competent performance within a situation, whereas biased or deficient processing is hypothesized to lead to deviant social behavior Empirical studies are described in which children's patterns of processing have been found to predict individual differences in their aggressive behavior The implications of this body of work for empirically based interventions aimed at reducing children's aggressive behavior are discussed.

[1]  G. Ladd,et al.  A cognitive-social learning model of social-skill training. , 1983, Psychological review.

[2]  J. Lochman,et al.  Effects of social problem-solving training and self-instruction training with aggressive boys. , 1986 .

[3]  The future of IQ testing in education , 1979 .

[4]  H. Gerard,et al.  Fear and social comparison. , 1961, Journal of abnormal and social psychology.

[5]  K. Dodge,et al.  Biased decision-making processes in aggressive boys. , 1981, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[6]  J. Darley,et al.  Expectancy confirmation processes arising in the social interaction sequence. , 1980 .

[7]  Robert P. Abelson,et al.  A Variance Explanation Paradox: When a Little is a Lot , 1985 .

[8]  K. Dodge,et al.  The assessment of intention-cue detection skills in children: implications for developmental psychopathology. , 1984, Child development.

[9]  W. Hartup,et al.  Friendship and Aggressiveness as Determinants of Conflict Outcomes in Middle Childhood , 1989 .

[10]  R. McFall,et al.  Heterosocial perception in rapists. , 1987, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[11]  Nancy G. Guerra,et al.  Cognitive mediators of aggression in adolescent offenders: I. Assessment. , 1988 .

[12]  Daniel Kahneman,et al.  Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability , 1973 .

[13]  K. Dodge,et al.  Utilization of Self-Schemas as a Mechanism of Interpretational Bias in Aggressive Children , 1987 .

[14]  S. Asher,et al.  Children's loneliness: a comparison of rejected and neglected peer status. , 1985, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[15]  H. Markus.  Self-schemata and processing information about the self. , 1977 .

[16]  R. Dawes.  SOCIAL SELECTION BASED ON MULTIDIMENSIONAL CRITERIA. , 1964, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[17]  Reactions to unfavorable personal evaluations as a function of the evaluator's perceived adjustment. , 1959 .

[18]  L. Ross.  The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process1 , 1977 .

[19]  K. Dodge,et al.  Attributional bias in aggressive adolescent boys and girls. , 1983 .

[20]  H. Simon,et al.  Motivational and emotional controls of cognition. , 1967, Psychological review.

[21]  G. Ladd,et al.  Predicting Preschoolers' Peer Behavior and Status from Their Interpersonal Strategies: A Comparison of Verbal and Enactive Responses to Hypothetical Social Dilemmas. , 1988 .

[22]  W. Mischel,et al.  Traits as prototypes: Effects on recognition memory. , 1977 .

[23]  L. Berkowitz.  Frustration-aggression hypothesis: examination and reformulation. , 1989, Psychological bulletin.

[24]  Henry W. Riecken,et al.  Some Determinants and Consequences of the Perception of Social Causality1 , 1955 .

[25]  R. McFall.  A review and reformulation of the concept of social skills. , 1982 .

[26]  O. Aydin,et al.  Attribution tendencies of popular and unpopular children. , 1979, The British journal of social and clinical psychology.

[27]  H. Kelley,et al.  Errors in perception of intentions in a mixed-motive game , 1970 .

[28]  A. Tversky,et al.  On the psychology of prediction , 1973 .

[29]  K. Dodge,et al.  Social cognition and children's aggressive behavior. , 1980, Child development.

[30]  A. Bandura,et al.  Imitation of film-mediated agressive models. , 1963, Journal of abnormal and social psychology.

[31]  S. Epstein,et al.  Instigation to aggression as a function of degree of defeat and perceived aggressive intent of the opponent. , 1967, Journal of personality.

[32]  A. Bandura.  Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. , 1977, Psychological review.

[33]  J. Coie,et al.  Effect of Expectancy Inductions on Rejected Children's Acceptance by Unfamiliar Peers. , 1989 .

[34]  K. Dodge.  Social Competence in Children. , 1986 .

[35]  E. Burnstein,et al.  Arbitrariness of frustration and its consequences for aggression in a social situation. , 1962, Journal of personality.

[36]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Rating the Risks , 1979 .

[37]  W. Mischel.  Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality. , 1973, Psychological review.

[38]  J. Lochman,et al.  Treatment and generalization effects of cognitive-behavioral and goal-setting interventions with aggressive boys. , 1984, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[39]  D. G. Perry,et al.  Cognitive social learning mediators of aggression. , 1986, Child development.

[40]  A. Pepitone,et al.  Intentionality, responsibility, and interpersonal attraction. , 1957, Journal of personality.

[41]  N. Pastore.  The role of arbitrariness in the frustration-aggression hypothesis. , 1952, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[42]  K. Dodge,et al.  Social information processing in child psychiatric populations , 1984, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[43]  E. E. Jones,et al.  From Acts To Dispositions The Attribution Process In Person Perception1 , 1965 .