Some Consequences of Early Harsh Discipline: Child Aggression and a Maladaptive Social Information Processing Style

Abstract

Although a number of studies have reported a relation between abusive parental behavior and later aggressive behavior in the victim, many of these investigations have had methodological limitations that make precise interpretation of their results problematic. In the present study, we attempted to determine whether harsh parental discipline occurring early in life was associated with later aggression and internalizing behavior in children, using a prospective design with randomly selected samples to avoid some of these methodological difficulties. Structural equation modeling indicated a consistent relation between harsh discipline and aggression in 2 separate cohorts of children. This relation did not appear to be due to possible confounding factors such as child temperament, SES, and marital violence, although there was some indication in our data that the latter variables were related to child aggression. In addition, our analyses suggested that the effect of harsh discipline on child aggression may be mediated at least in part by maladaptive social information processing patterns that develop in response to the harsh discipline.

Psychological processes in young bullies versus bully‐victims

“…Indeed, if we excluded data of these children from the multivariate analysis, the difference between bullies and bully‐victims became nonsignificant. It is possible that these children's extreme scores were outliers or stemmed from home experiences such as harsh parenting (Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1992). However, these interpretations are quite speculative and further research seems warranted.…”

Real‐time hostile attribution measurement and aggression in children

“…Some additional evidence suggests that the age range between 9 and 12 has been linked to a number of variables including decreases in parental monitoring and increases in the hostility of the school environment, child autonomy within the school environment, and peer influence on children (Blyth et al, 1978;Eccles et al, 1993;Fite et al, 2006). Research has indicated that the role of peer influence on children also shows a curvilinear pattern in which children's conformity with their peers peaks during the middle-school years (Berndt, 1979 (Leff et al, 2006;Lochman & Dodge, 1994;Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1992). In these media, short social interactions, or vignettes, are presented visually to the participant.…”

“…Some of the cartoon-based measures have coupled visual stimuli with a narrative story read aloud to participants that describes what is happening in the depiction (Leff et al, 2006;Weiss et al, 1992). Narrative stimuli have also been used alone as auditory stimuli.…”

“…For example, the child may be asked why the peer might have done what they did (Weiss et al, 1992). In some studies, additional probing questions may be asked such as "Do you think he did it on purpose?"…”

“…(Steinberg & Dodge, 1983). Other open-ended response formats, such as the verbal protocol used by Milch-Reich and colleagues (1999) (Crick, 1995;Weiss et al, 1992).…”