Burks Virginia Salzer, Laird Robert D, Dodge Kenneth A, Pettit Gregory S, Bates John E
Vanderbilt University.
Soc Dev. 1999;8(2):220-235. doi: 10.1111/1467-9507.00092.
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.
尽管儿童暴力行为的发展可能涉及众多因素，但实际的攻击行为之前会有一个决策过程，该过程作为近端控制机制。这项纵向研究的主要目标是通过关注社会认知的两个方面来理解儿童攻击行为中这种近端控制机制的本质：社会信息处理和存储的知识（即作为过去事件潜在记忆的内部知识结构）。研究假设如下：（1）具有敌意知识结构的儿童比知识结构不那么敌对和消极的儿童会表现出更具偏向性的攻击性社会信息处理模式；（2）表现出敌意知识结构的儿童会长期表现出攻击性行为；（3）敌意知识结构和敌意社会信息处理模式的发展有助于攻击行为的稳定性，从而部分介导早期和后期攻击行为之间的关系。对585名男孩和女孩（19%为非裔美国人）从幼儿园到八年级进行了跟踪研究。这项调查的结果支持了这些假设，并根据在我们关于儿童暴力行为所涉及心理过程的理论中纳入知识结构的重要性进行了讨论。
