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The hypothesis that there is a constellation of qualities that predisposes certain children to be chronically victimized is supported by three forms of evidence. First, children who are victims have qualities in common that differentiate them from other children. Some of these qualities exist before the child is victimized; others develop because of the victimization. Second, children who are victimized early in life remain victims for a long period of time, even though the bullies and situations may differ. Third, other children are able to identify potential victims with high reliability. To clarify why these victims are chronically harassed, this article examines qualities of victims, bullies, and the environment that support bully/victim problems.

Most studies assessing the link between parental discipline and child aggression have focused primarily on discipline as a cause and aggression as an outcome. In addition to the pathway from discipline to aggression, however, aggressive behavior on the part of the child may lead to future use of discipline by the parent. In this study, structural equation modeling was used to assess reciprocal influences over time between a mothers' use of discipline and aggression in children. Data were drawn from the Springfield Child Development Project, a longitudinal study of middle childhood and adolescence, focusing on antecedents of aggression. The original sample consisted of 440 mother-child dyads living in the city of Springfield, MA. Children in the sample were between 7 and 14 years of age at the first data collection period and between 12 and 19 years of age at the final data collection period. Four hypotheses were tested: (1) a mother's use of aggressive discipline predicts an increase in later child aggression, (2) child aggression predicts an increase in later use of aggressive discipline, (3) the use of reasoning predicts a decrease in later child aggression, and (4) child aggression predicts an increase in later use of reasoning. All hypotheses except number 3 were supported to some degree. Results suggest that children's early aggressive behavior leads to an increase in their mothers' use of both reasoning and aggressive discipline; in turn, increased use of aggressive discipline leads to an increase in aggression during both childhood and adolescence.

In two experiments, children between l l /2 and 7 l /2 years of age were tested on a predicted, eight-step sequence of the development of social roles. Performance on this sequence was related to two measures of more spontaneous behavior. Nearly all children fit the predicted sequence perfectly. By 2 years of age, most children could make a doll act as an independent agent. The majority of 3-yearolds could make a doll carry out several behaviors fitting the role of doctor. At age 4 or 5, most children developed the capacity to show a social role, making a doctor doll interact with a patient doll. The intersection of social roles for two agents appeared at about age 6: A man doll could be both doctor and father to a patient who was also his daughter. In their spontaneous behavior, early preschoolers almost always showed the highest step that they were capable of, but beginning with the step for social roles, late preschoolers seldom showed their highest step.For children to act and feel socially competent, they need to understand roles such as mother, father, doctor, and patient. Despite the importance of these social roles in the child's life, the development of social roles in the preschool years is, at best, only vaguely understood. The several previous studies of social-role development have concluded that children do not really understand social roles until 7 or 8 years of age (

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