Within Intervention Change: Anger Regulation and Hostile Intent Attribution as Mechanisms to Reduce Children’s Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

Intervention programs can effectively reduce children’s aggressive behavior problems. However, surprisingly few studies have investigated through what underlying mechanisms these interventions exert their beneficial effects. This requires high-frequency measurements of change mechanisms throughout the course of treatment. We used such a design to examine adaptive anger regulation and hostile intent attribution as mechanisms of change in an intervention to reduce children’s aggressive behavior problems. In total, 76 boys with aggressive behavior problems (Mage = 10.58, SD = 1.52; 96.1% born in Netherlands) participated in an 11-session cognitive behavior therapy intervention. During each treatment session, we used brief 3-item measures to assess children’s self-reported anger regulation, hostile intent attribution and aggression, as well as parent-reported child aggression. We analyzed these high-frequency measurements using latent growth curve models, providing an empirical test of individual-level change mechanisms. Results showed that individual change in child-reported aggression was associated with individual change in adaptive anger regulation and hostile intent attribution. For parent-reported aggression, such associations were found only for hostile intent attribution. These findings provide support for anger regulation and hostile intent attribution as within intervention change mechanisms, supporting the idea that these mechanisms are effective intervention targets to reduce children’s aggressive behavior problems.