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DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIALIZATION OF PHYSICAL AGGRESSION IN VERY YOUNG BOYS
Carolyn Joy Dayton1, Johanna C Malone2
1Wayne State University.
Insights
Physical aggression is normal in toddlers but persistent aggression, especially in boys, requires attention. Early parent-infant relationships and environmental factors influence these developmental trajectories.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychiatry
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Physical aggression is a normative behavior in early childhood, peaking around age two.
- Most children develop alternative behaviors, showing declines in aggression by ages three and four.
- A subset of children, particularly boys, do not show these declines, indicating potential developmental concerns.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review early individual and contextual factors influencing trajectories of persistent physical aggression in children.
- To apply a dynamic systems (DS) approach to understand the developmental pathways of aggression.
- To highlight the role of the parent-infant relationship in emotion regulation and its impact on aggression.
Main Methods:
- A literature review employing a dynamic systems (DS) framework.
- Focus on identifying early risk factors within the parent-infant dyad.
- Examination of biological sex differences and contextual influences like family violence.
Main Results:
- The parent-infant relationship is central to developing adaptive emotion regulation, impacting aggression.
- Biological sex differences may modulate early relational dynamics related to aggression.
- Family violence and other contextual factors significantly influence aggressive trajectories.
Conclusions:
- Early identification of factors influencing persistent aggression is crucial for intervention.
- The parent-infant relationship and environmental context are key targets for supporting adaptive development.
- Understanding dynamic systems is essential for addressing complex developmental issues like childhood aggression.
Abstract:
The expression of physical aggression is normative in early child development; it peaks in the second year of life, with steep declines for most children by the third and fourth years as children learn alternatives to aggression. Some children, however, fail to demonstrate declines in aggressive acts, and many of these are boys. The current review uses a dynamic systems (DS) approach to identify early individual and contextual factors that may dynamically influence trajectories of aggression as a characteristic way of engaging within communities and relationships. Within the DS framework, we focus on the parent-infant relationship as central to the development of adaptive emotion-regulation capacities of the infant and young child. Biological sex differences that may influence this early relationship are highlighted, as is the influence of contextual processes such as family violence. Clinical implications suggested by both the empirical and theoretical literatures are then described.