Community Violence Exposure, Social Cognition, and Aggression Among Urban Elementary School Children
| Autor: | and Anja Spindler, L. Rowell Huesmann, Nancy G. Guerra |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2003 |
| Předmět: |
Male
Adolescent Urban Population media_common.quotation_subject Poison control Violence Personality Assessment Social Environment Fantasy Education Developmental psychology Cohort Studies Social Facilitation Social cognition Developmental and Educational Psychology medicine Humans Longitudinal Studies Early childhood Child Poverty media_common Chicago Aggression Socialization Human factors and ergonomics Cognition Imitative Behavior Child Preschool Sociometric Techniques Pediatrics Perinatology and Child Health Normative Female medicine.symptom Imitation Psychology Clinical psychology |
| Zdroj: | Child Development. 74:1561-1576 |
| ISSN: | 1467-8624 0009-3920 |
| Popis: | The effects of witnessing community violence on aggressive cognitions and behavior were investigated in an ethnically diverse sample of 4,458 children living in urban neighborhoods. Prior violence exposure had a significant effect in increasing aggression, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggressive fantasy. Although exposure to violence predicted aggressive behavior both in Grades 1 through 3 (ages 5–8) and Grades 4 through 6 (ages 9–12), the effects on social cognition were only evident in the later grades. Furthermore, the effect of violence exposure on aggression in the later grades was partially mediated by its effect on social cognition. These findings suggest that witnessing community violence has an effect on children’s aggressive behavior through both imitation of violence and the development of associated cognitions as children get older. One of the most robust findings in the literature on the etiology of aggression is the statistical continuity of aggression from early childhood into adulthood (Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz, & Walder, 1984; Olweus, 1979). Several researchers have argued that one of the mediating factors in maintaining this continuity is the pattern of social cognition the child develops supporting aggression. In other words, aggressive behavior is seen as being increasingly controlled by internal self-regulating processes that become more stable over time (Huesmann & Guerra, 1997). Huesmann (1988, 1998) has emphasized the importance of cognitive schemas used as models of the world, cognitive scripts stored in memory and used as guides for social behavior, and normative beliefs used to evaluate the appropriateness of scripts. The more aggressive child is presumed to have acquired cognitive schemas depicting the world as a more hostile place, to endorse normative beliefs that aggression is more acceptable, and to have encoded in memory more extensive, wellconnected networks of social scripts emphasizing aggressive responses. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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