Social-Cognitive and Emotion Processing in Children's Aggression: Descriptors, Predictors, and Precursors.

Abstract

Components of boys’ and girls’ early social information and emotion processing were investigated. The first study used narrative themes derived from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery and measures of emotion understanding to examine how individual differences in children’s affective social-cognitive schemata related to hostile attribution biases. Results revealed that distinct schemata related to physical and relational aggression were uniquely associated with hostile attribution biases. Also, deficits in emotion understanding were associated with hostile attribution biases only for girls. These findings suggest that maladaptive affective social-cognitive schemata are present early in development and are related to hostile attribution biases in gender-specific ways. In the second study, individual differences in children’s affective social-cognitive schemata, hostile intent attributions, and skills in emotion regulation were examined in relation to teacher reports of overt and relational aggression. Results indicated that deficits and biases in social information and emotion processing contributed to the display of boys’ overt aggression uniquely, but interacted to contribute to the display of boys’ relational aggression. However, deficits in emotion processing primarily contributed to the display of girls’ overt and relational aggression. Thus, findings suggest distinct patterns in the development of overt and relational aggression during the kindergarten period and underscore the importance of including measures of both social-cognitive and emotion processes in investigations of children’s aggression. In the third study, mothers’ parenting and discipline techniques, children’s emotion understanding, and children’s susceptibility to anger during preschool were examined in relation to children’s affective social-cognitive schemata during kindergarten. Results revealed that early deficits and biases in emotion processing predicted less socially adaptive schemata for boys, whereas early deficits and biases in emotion processing interacted with mothers’ parenting to predict more skills in emotion processing for girls. These findings suggest that antecedents to maladaptive affective social-cognitive schemata differ for boys and girls and are present as early as the preschool period. Findings are integrated and discussed in relation to future research design, as well as preventative and interventional measures in the development of children’s physical and relational aggression.