Psychopathy scores predict adolescent inpatient aggression

This prospective study found that psychopathy scores predicted aggressive behavior among 72 adolescent psychiatric inpatients, even after controlling for age, sex, socioeconomic status, length of hospital stay, and independent self-report measures of impulsivity and conduct problems. Psychopathy was assessed within 3 days of hospital admission by clinical raters trained in the use of Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. Aggressive behavior was recorded by clinical staff members who were unaware of psychopathy ratings. Adolescents rated higher in psychopathy exhibited higher frequencies of both reactive and instrumental aggressive behavior than adolescents rated lower in psychopathy. Post hoc regression analyses revealed that psychopathy had incremental validity in predicting aggression beyond the contribution of clinical diagnosis or scores on the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory.     

Social cognition and aggression in delinquent adolescent males

The relationship of aggression to several social cognitive variables in delinquent adolescent males was investigated. Subjects were fifty-eight institutionalized males identified by peers as high-aggressive or low-aggressive. Participants were administered measures of perspective taking, moral judgment, and person perception. The findings indicated that only perspective-taking ability was significantly related to aggressive behavior in delinquents. High-aggressive delinquents were less able to perceive others' viewpoints than were low-aggressive delinquents. These findings are consistent with previous research concerning perspective taking and aggression, but disconfirm research involving other social cognitive variables and aggression. Results further indicate the importance of studying social cognitive variables as they relate to relevant clinical behaviors.     

Rural adolescent aggression and parental emotional support

Preliminary research findings suggest important distinctions between rural and urban adolescent aggression risk and protective factors. Despite these potentially important differences, most of the existing research on adolescent aggression has utilized urban samples. The current study examines the direct association between parental emotional support and rural adolescent aggression, and whether adolescent psychopathology and substance abuse mediate this association. Multi-method measurement (self-report, parent report, and behavioral observations) were employed in measuring aggression and emotional support variables with rural, nonadjudicated adolescents (N=62) and their mothers or stepmothers. Results indicated that parental emotional support has an indirect influence on adolescent aggression. Adolescent substance abuse was completely mediated by adolescent grade-point average, indicating no significant direct impact on aggression. Adolescent psychopathology significantly mediated the relationship between parental emotional support and adolescent aggression. Particular items contributed substantially to this mediating association, making certain characteristics, rather than a specific diagnosis, relevant to psychopathology's mediating impact. These characteristics include cognitive perception of others as critical or hostile, emotional anxiousness in social situations, and behavioral persistence in social interactions despite these perceptions.     

Neighborhood violent crime and adolescent relationship aggression

Research has shown that neighborhoods play a role in the etiology of violence. However, few adolescent relationship aggression (ARA) studies have objective measures of violent neighborhoods. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of youth, this study examines the association between ARA and local levels of violent crime (measured using geocoded Uniform Crime Report data from each of the youths’ residential neighborhoods). Study analyses are based on survey data from 723 youth (ages 10–18) in current or recent dating relationships (351 males and 372 females) in the Survey on Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV), a national representative household panel survey exploring interpersonal violence and related aggression among adolescents. About 19% of the sample reported ARA victimization in their most recent dating relationship (ARA perpetration was 17%). Neighborhood violent crime in the study (males living in 86.9 and females 99.8) was slightly lower than the national average of 100. With a broad national sample, 40% non-Whites, hypotheses guided by theories of neighborhood influence were tested. The study did not find an association between neighborhood violent crime and ARA victimization and perpetration, controlling for key demographic factors. The results, for a broad range of high- and low-crime neighborhoods, suggest that neighborhood violence does not seem to affect individual rates of ARA. The results suggest the ARA victimization and perpetration are perhaps ubiquitous and found both in low and high violent crime neighborhoods, suggesting that addressing local violent crime rates alone does not seem to be a path to also reducing ARA.     

Attributions for social failure and adolescent aggression

In the present study, 119 high school boys and 79 institutionalized delinquent boys of the same age range were assessed on their own aggressive behavior and on their tendencies to attribute social failure to controllable, external, stable causes, anticipate a hostile affective response, and endorse aggressive behavioral responses to by pothetical social situations. While the two populations of boys did not differ detectably in their attributional tendencies, the relations between an individual's aggressiveness and an individual's attributions differed considerably across the two populations. In particular, among deliquent but not among delinquent but not among nondelinquent boys, the tendency to attribute one's social failures to stable and controllable causes predicted stronger hostile emotional responses to failure and a tendency to endorse physically aggressive responses following such failure. These hostile emotional responses to failure and this preference for a physically aggressive response, in turn, predicted greater actual aggression within the population of delinquent boys. Neither of these links could be demonstrated for nondelinquent boys. However, in the nondelinquent sample, attributing social failure to external and controllable causes predicted endorsement of aggressive responses only indirectly through increased hostile affect. It was concluded that the specific relations between cognitive and affective responses to social failure may be a contributing factor to the serious physical aggression displayed by some delinquents and to the less serious aggression of nondelinquents. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

The validity of physical aggression in predicting adolescent academic performance

Background. Aggression has a long history in academic research as both a criterion and a predictor variable and it is well documented that aggression is related to a variety of poor academic outcomes such as: lowered academic performance, absenteeism and lower graduation rates. However, recent research has implicated physical aggression as being predictive of lower academic performance. Aims. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the ‘Big Five’ personality traits of agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion and physical aggression in predicting the grade point averages (GPA) of adolescent students and to investigate whether or not there were differences in these relationships between male and female students. Sample. A sample of 992 students in grades 9 to 12 from a high school in south‐eastern USA as part of a larger study examining the students' preparation for entry into the workforce. Method. The study was correlational in nature: students completed a personality inventory developed by the second author with the GPA information supplied by the school. Results. Results indicated that physical aggression accounts for 16% of variance in GPA and it adds 7% to the prediction of GPA beyond the Big Five. The Big Five traits added only 1.5% to the prediction of GPA after controlling for physical aggression. Interestingly, a significantly larger amount of variance in GPA was predicted by physical aggression for females than for males. Conclusions. Aggression accounts for significantly more variance in the GPA of females than for males, even when controlling for the Big Five personality factors. Future research should examine the differences in the expression of aggression in males and females, as well as how this is affecting interactions between peers and between students and their teachers.     

Shared targets for aggression by early adolescent friends

Similarity in early adolescent friends' general aggressiveness is well known, but questions remain regarding the degree to which friends aggress against the same victims. The authors examined this by administering the newly created Dyadic Aggression and Victimization Inventory to 417 sixth- through eighth-grade boys and girls (53%). Friends were found to share more targets for aggression than nonfriends, even after general levels of aggression were controlled (all ps < .05). Moreover, greater sharing of targets with friends relative to nonfriends was more pronounced among aggressive youths than nonaggressive youths, especially among aggressive youths' best friends relative to their other friends. Generally, these findings were similar across boys and girls as well as among older and younger youths. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

The adolescent brain

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by suboptimal decisions and actions that give rise to an increased incidence of unintentional injuries and violence, alcohol and drug abuse, unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Traditional neurobiological and cognitive explanations for adolescent behavior have failed to account for the nonlinear changes in behavior observed during adolescence, relative to childhood and adulthood. This review provides a biologically plausible conceptualization of the neural mechanisms underlying these nonlinear changes in behavior, as a heightened responsiveness to incentives while impulse control is still relatively immature during this period. Recent human imaging and animal studies provide a biological basis for this view, suggesting differential development of limbic reward systems relative to top-down control systems during adolescence relative to childhood and adulthood. This developmental pattern may be exacerbated in those adolescents with a predisposition toward risk-taking, increasing the risk for poor outcomes.     

An object-oriented simulation of a brain system underlying human aggression

Neural structures involved in aggression were incorporated into a model on the basis of neuro-anatomical data. A software program written in Smalltalk, the Brain Structure Simulator (Seguin, 1994) was used to simulate the effects of activity levels of different brain structures. Relationships among brain structures were then tested by changing activity levels of key structures. Results were consistent with research reports on the brain basis of aggression (Albert, Walsh, & Jonik, 1993; Pontius, 1984).     

Locus of control as a contributing factor in the relation between self-perception and adolescent aggression

Researchers continue to debate the role of self-esteem in aggression, but research has shown a consistent association between narcissism and aggression in adults and adolescents [e.g., Barry et al., 2007; Bushman and Baumeister, 1998; Stucke, 2007]. The primary aim of the current study was to examine whether locus of control (LOC) moderated the relation between self-perception variables (i.e., self-esteem and narcissism) and aggression in adolescents. Participants were 174 youth (145 males, 26 females) between the ages of 16 and 19 who were enrolled in a voluntary residential program for youth who have dropped out of school. The results showed that LOC moderated the association between self-esteem and aggression such that low self-esteem was associated with higher levels of aggression for individuals with an external LOC. Contrary to expectations, LOC failed to moderate the narcissism-aggression relation. The implications of this study for understanding how self-perception is related to adolescent aggression are discussed.     

The reactive–proactive aggression questionnaire: differential correlates of reactive and proactive aggression in adolescent boys

This study reports the development of the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ), and the differential correlates of these two forms of aggression. Antisocial, psychosocial and personality measures were obtained at ages 7 and 16 years in schoolboys, while the RPQ was administered to 334 of the boys at age 16 years. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated a significant fit for a two‐factor proactive–reactive model that replicated from one independent subsample to another. Proactive aggression was uniquely characterized at age 7 by initiation of fights, strong‐arm tactics, delinquency, poor school motivation, poor peer relationships, single‐parent status, psychosocial adversity, substance‐abusing parents, and hyperactivity, and at age 16 by a psychopathic personality, blunted affect, delinquency, and serious violent offending. Reactive aggression was uniquely characterized at age 16 by impulsivity, hostility, social anxiety, lack of close friends, unusual perceptual experiences, and ideas of reference. Findings confirm and extend the differential correlates of proactive–reactive aggression, and demonstrate that this brief but reliable and valid self‐report instrument can be used to assess proactive and reactive aggression in child and adolescent samples. Aggr. Behav. 32:159–171, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Multiple trajectories of physical aggression among adolescent boys and girls

Latent growth mixture modeling was used to identify discrete patterns of physical aggression from Grades 7 to 11 among a sample of 1,877 youth. Four trajectory classes adequately explained the development of physical aggression in both boys and girls: Low/No Aggression; Persistent High Aggression; Desisting Aggression, characterized by decreasing risk throughout adolescence; and Adolescent Aggression, characterized by low early risk that increases until Grade 9, levels out, and then declines in late adolescence. Girls were less likely than boys were to be in any trajectory besides the Low/No Aggression trajectory. Parental supervision, deviant peer association, academic orientation, impulsivity, and emotional distress at Grade 7 were all strongly associated with trajectory class membership. These associations did not differ by gender. These findings strongly suggest that the processes involved in the development of physical aggression in adolescence operate similarly in boys and girls.     

Reducing verbal aggression in adults with brain injury

This study presents data on the reduction of verbal aggression of two clients with brain injury. In one client, the inappropriate verbal behavior was reduced by using behavioral contracts with the duration of up to 6 days. In the other client, restitution (apology), reinforcement, and response cost were used to reduce verbal aggression.     

The use of a visual cue to reduce profanity in a brain injured adult

This study evaluated the use of visual cue to reduce profanity in a brain injured client. The visual cue consisted of placing a piece of paper in front of the client and marking the paper each time the client used profanity. Once profanity was reduced, a maintenance procedure of verbal feedback was introduced which consisted of telling the client how many times he used profanity during a therapy session. A multiple base-line design was used across three settings, and the results showed a decrease in profanity in all three settings.     

Childhood aggression, adolescent delinquency, and drug use: a longitudinal study.

The interrelation of childhood aggression, early and late adolescent delinquency, and drug use was explored. Data were obtained for the subjects when they were 5-10 years old. Follow-up interviews were conducted when the subjects were between 13-18 years old and again when they were 15-20 years old. A LISREL analysis of the three waves of data indicated that childhood aggression is a precursor of adolescent drug use and delinquency, and that early adolescent drug use is correlated with contemporaneous delinquency as well as with later drug use and delinquency.     

Sex differences in the adolescent brain

Adolescence is a time of increased divergence between males and females in physical characteristics, behavior, and risk for psychopathology. Here we will review data regarding sex differences in brain structure and function during this period of the lifespan. The most consistent sex difference in brain morphometry is the 9–12% larger brain size that has been reported in males. Individual brain regions that have most consistently been reported as different in males and females include the basal ganglia, hippocampus, and amygdala. Diffusion tensor imaging and magnetization transfer imaging studies have also shown sex differences in white matter development during adolescence. Functional imaging studies have shown different patterns of activation without differences in performance, suggesting male and female brains may use slightly different strategies for achieving similar cognitive abilities. Longitudinal studies have shown sex differences in the trajectory of brain development, with females reaching peak values of brain volumes earlier than males. Although compelling, these sex differences are present as group averages and should not be taken as indicative of relative capacities of males or females.