Reducing Aggressive Children’s Hostile Attributions: A Cognitive Bias Modification Procedure

Abstract

Children with aggression problems tend to interpret other's intentions as hostile in ambiguous social situations. Among clinically referred children with aggressive behavior problems, this hostile attribution style may be relatively rigid and difficult to change, due to prevalent histories of aversive social experience and/or personal vulnerability. The present study examined the effectiveness of a cognitive bias modification (CBM) training to reduce hostile interpretations of facial expressions in clinically referred aggressive boys. We conducted two experiments: Both Study 1 (N = 59, Mage = 11.8) and Study 2 (N = 75, Mage = 11.5) showed that the training effectively reduced hostile interpretation of facial expressions. However, we found no generalization to relevant other outcomes, including state anger and aggression (assessed using a multi-method approach), and hostile attribution assessed in a game context. Taken together, this research illustrates the potential of employing the CBM procedure to reduce aggressive boys' hostile attributions: The procedure is time and cost-efficient, and relatively easily implemented. Despite this potential, the context-dependency and generalization of effects should be better understood before the procedure can be taken to scale in clinical populations.

Using Positive Emotion Training With Maltreated Youths to Reduce Anger Bias and Physical Aggression

“…Perhaps the most significant and exciting aspect of our results is our finding that PET affected anger bias among maltreated youths: Corrective feedback clearly reduced these vulnerable youths’ tendency to interpret ambiguous faces as angry. Our results replicate and extend those from prior work with other populations, including typically developing children, clinic-referred youths, and justice-involved youths (Hiemstra et al, 2018; Penton-Voak et al, 2013; Stoddard et al, 2016). Also consistent with findings from other work (Dalili, Schofield-Toloza, Munafò, & Penton-Voak, 2017; Griffiths et al, 2015), the effects of PET generalized beyond the original stimuli (i.e., a male face) to novel stimuli (i.e., a female face).…”

“…A few bottom-up intervention strategies have targeted anger bias. In contrast to the strategies just mentioned, which largely seek to enhance recognition of fearful expressions, bottom-up strategies focused on anger bias seek to decrease tendencies to perceive expressions as angry (e.g., Hiemstra, De Castro, & Thomaes, 2018; Stoddard et al, 2016). One such approach, positive emotion training (PET), developed by Penton-Voak and colleagues (2013), is designed to shift an individual’s tendency to perceive ambiguous facial expressions as angry toward perceiving ambiguous facial expressions as happy.…”

“…Perhaps more importantly, youths in the treatment condition also decreased their aggressive tendencies, reflected in both self- and staff-reported incidents of aggression, during a 2-week posttraining period (Griffiths, Jarrold, Penton-Voak, & Munafò, 2015; Penton-Voak et al, 2013). A similar intervention has since been tested with clinically referred youths, ages 9 to 14, with a history of aggression (Hiemstra et al, 2018). Results also suggested benefits, particularly in terms of reducing anger bias.…”

Modification of hostile attribution bias reduces self-reported reactive aggressive behavior in adolescents

“…Our sample was selected based on teacher reports of elevated aggression, but participants were not clinically referred. Results of studies with samples displaying more severe cases of aggression are mixed, with Penton-Voak et al (2013) finding training-induced reductions in both hostile attribution bias and aggression, but Hiemstra et al (2019) finding training-induced reductions only in hostile attribution bias but not aggression. Thus, although it seems relatively straightforward to change hostile attribution bias using cognitive training approaches, impacting on measures of aggression poses much more of a challenge, especially so in clinical populations.…”

“…The training resulted not only in a more positive classification of ambiguous faces (i.e., participants in the training group were more likely to classify relatively angry ambiguous faces as happy) but also in decreases in self-reported aggression and anger in healthy adults (Penton-Voak et al, 2013, Experiments 1 and 3) and decreases in both staff-rated and self-reported aggressive behavior in high-risk adolescents (Experiment 2). Promising as these findings are, Hiemstra, Orobio de Castro, and Thomaes (2019) could not replicate them in two experiments. Using a similar procedure to train clinically referred aggressive boys to classify ambiguous faces as happy, they found that training reduced the hostile interpretation of ambiguous faces, but there were no training effects on measures of aggression.…”