Knowledge structures, social information processing, and children's aggressive behavior

Although a multitude of factors may be involved in the development of child ren'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 proxim al control mechanism involved lit 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 memorie s of past events). It was hypothesized that: (1) children with hostile know ledge structures will display more biased patterns of aggressive social inf ormation processing than children whose knowledge structures are less hosti le 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 media te the relation between early and later aggressive behavior. 585 boys and g irls (19% African-American) were followed from kindergarten through eighth grade. Results from this investigation support the hypotheses and ale discu ssed in terms of the significance of the inclusion of knowledge structures in our theories of the mental processes involved in children's violent beha viour.