RESUMO
The current study examined relations between effortful control (ones ability to focus and shift attention in an adaptive manner), psychological control (caregiver attempts to manipulate the child's internal world) and proactive and reactive aggression. Participants were 69 children (54% male) ranging from 9 to 12 years of age (M = 10.35, SD = 1.14) and their primary caregivers from a community-recruited sample. Results indicate that psychological control and effortful control interacted and contributed to proactive aggression. At high levels of effortful control psychological control was positively associated with proactive aggression, whereas at low levels of effortful control psychological control was unrelated to proactive aggression. In contrast, although both effortful control and psychological control were correlated with reactive aggression, only effortful control was uniquely negatively associated with reactive aggression. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.
Assuntos
Adaptação Psicológica , Agressão/psicologia , Relações Pais-Filho , Criança , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pais/psicologiaRESUMO
The current study provided further validity for the use of a measure of proactive and reactive aggression that was first developed by Little and his colleagues. Confirmatory factor analyses performed with a high-risk clinical population (N = 107) revealed that the model was a good fit to the data. Structural equation models revealed significant associations in the expected direction between the Little et al. measure and another measure of proactive and reactive aggression developed by Dodge and Coie. Further analyses revealed that the proactive aggression subscales of the Little et al. and Dodge and Coie measures were significantly related to conduct problems. However, the reactive aggression subscale of the Little et al. measure was not related to social problems while both the proactive and reactive aggression subscales of the Dodge and Coie measure were.
