Behavioral treatment approaches to pathological unsocialized physical aggression in young children.

This paper presents some hypotheses regarding the motivation of pathological unsocialized physical aggression in children and also reviews behavioral treatment. Tentative leads were offered as to extrinsic and intrinsic determinants. Among the most promising of these were parent-child interactive and attributive factors, and deficits in information processing in social situations. It was hypothesized that some of these factors might not be specific to pathological unsocialized physical aggression but are characteristic of children with behavior problems. Under this hypothesis, few studies were found which employed appropriate control groups. It was also hypothesized that the study of extrinsic and intrinsic factors for pathological unsocialized physical aggression may improve the design of treatment programs.