Social-information-processing patterns mediate the impact of preventive intervention on adolescent antisocial behavior

Kenneth A Dodge, Jennifer Godwin, Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, Karen L Bierman, John D Coie, Kenneth A Dodge, Mark T Greenberg, John E Lochman, Robert J McMahon, Ellen E Pinderhughes, Kenneth A Dodge, Jennifer Godwin, Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, Karen L Bierman, John D Coie, Kenneth A Dodge, Mark T Greenberg, John E Lochman, Robert J McMahon, Ellen E Pinderhughes

Abstract

In the study reported here, we tested the hypothesis that the Fast Track preventive intervention's positive impact on antisocial behavior in adolescence is mediated by its impact on social-cognitive processes during elementary school. Fast Track is the largest and longest federally funded preventive intervention trial for children showing aggressive behavior at an early age. Participants were 891 high-risk kindergarten children (69% male, 31% female; 49% ethnic minority, 51% ethnic majority) who were randomly assigned to an intervention or a control group by school cluster. Multiyear intervention addressed social-cognitive processes through social-skill training groups, parent groups, classroom curricula, peer coaching, and tutoring. Assigning children to the intervention decreased their mean antisocial-behavior score after Grade 9 by 0.16 standardized units (p < .01). Structural equation models indicated that 27% of the intervention's impact on antisocial behavior was mediated by its impact on three social-cognitive processes: reducing hostile-attribution biases, increasing competent response generation to social problems, and devaluing aggression. These findings support a model of antisocial behavioral development mediated by social-cognitive processes, and they guide prevention planners to focus on these processes.

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

K. L. Bierman, J. D. Coie, K. A. Dodge, M. T. Greenberg, J. E. Lochman, and R. J. McMahon are the developers of the Fast Track curriculum and have a publishing agreement with Oxford University Press. M. T. Greenberg is an author of the Promoting Alternate Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum and has a royalty agreement with Channing-Bete, Inc. M. T. Greenberg is a principal in PATHS Training, LLC. R. J. McMahon is a coauthor of Helping the Noncompliant Child and has a royalty agreement with Guilford Publications, Inc.; he is also a member of the Treatments That Work Scientific Advisory Board with Oxford University Press.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Structural equation model depicting the influence of random assignment to the intervention condition on antisocial behavior (assessed after children completed Grade 9), as mediated by three social-cognitive processes. The three mediators were allowed to covary. Asterisks indicate significant path coefficients (*p < .05; †p < .10). Along the upper path, the value outside parentheses is the coefficient for the effect of condition on antisocial behavior in the model without mediators, whereas the value inside parentheses is the coefficient for the effect of condition on antisocial behavior in the model with mediators.

References

    1. Achenbach TM. Manual for Teacher’s Report Form and 1991 Profile. Burlington: University of Vermont; 1991.
    1. Bierman KL, Greenberg MT . the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Social skills training in the Fast Track Program. In: Peters RD, McMahon RJ, editors. Preventing childhood disorders, substance use, and delinquency. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; 1996. pp. 65–89.
    1. Blair C. School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological conceptualization of child functioning at school entry. American Psychologist. 2002;57:111–127.
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Home Interview With Child. 1991 Retrieved from
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. What do you think. 1995 Retrieved from
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Initial impact of the Fast Track prevention trial for conduct problems: I. The high-risk sample. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1999;67:631–647.
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. The implementation of the Fast Track program: An example of a large-scale prevention science efficacy trial. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. 2002a;30:1–17.
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Using the Fast Track randomized prevention trial to test the early-starter model of the development of serious conduct problems. Development and Psychopathology. 2002b;14:927–945.
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. The effects of the Fast Track program on serious problem outcomes at the end of elementary school. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. 2004;33:650–661.
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Fast Track randomized controlled trial to prevent externalizing psychiatric disorders: Findings from Grades 3 to 9. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 2007;46:1250–1262.
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. The difficulty of maintaining positive intervention effects: A look at disruptive behavior, deviant peer relations, and social skills during the middle school years. Journal of Early Adolescence. 2010;30:593–624.
    1. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. The effects of the Fast Track preventive intervention on the development of conduct disorder across childhood. Child Development. 2011;82:331–345.
    1. Crick NR, Dodge KA. A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin. 1994;115:74–101.
    1. Cunha F, Heckman JJ. Investing in our young people. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series. 2010 Jul;w16201 Retrieved from .
    1. Dodge KA. Social cognition and children’s aggressive behavior. Child Development. 1980;51:162–170.
    1. Dodge KA, Bates JE, Pettit GS. Mechanisms in the cycle of violence. Science. 1990;250:1678–1683.
    1. Dodge KA, Coie JD, Lynam D. Aggression and antisocial behavior in youth. In: Damon W, Eisenberg N, editors. Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development. 6. New York, NY: Wiley; 2006. pp. 719–788.
    1. Dodge KA, Lansford JE, Burks VS, Bates JE, Pettit GS, Fontaine R, Price JM. Peer rejection and social information-processing factors in the development of aggressive behavior problems in children. Child Development. 2003;74:374–393.
    1. Dodge KA, Pettit GS, Bates JE, Valente E. Social information-processing patterns partially mediate the effect of early physical abuse on later conduct problems. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 1995;104:632–643.
    1. Dodge KA, Pettit GS, McClaskey CL, Brown M. Social competence in children. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 1986;51(2 Serial No 213)
    1. Durlak JA, Weissberg RP, Dymnicki AP, Taylor RD, Schellinger KB. The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development. 2011;82:405–432.
    1. Elliott DS, Huizinga D, Ageton SS. Explaining delinquency and drug use. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; 1985.
    1. Erdley CA, Asher SR. Children’s social goals and self-efficacy perceptions as influences on their responses to ambiguous provocation. Child Development. 1996;67:1329–1344.
    1. Guerra NG, Slaby RG. Cognitive mediators of aggression in adolescent offenders: II. Intervention. Developmental Psychology. 1990;26:269–277.
    1. Heckman JJ. Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children. Science. 2006;312:1900–1902.
    1. Hudley C, Graham S. An attributional intervention to reduce peer-directed aggression among African American boys. Child Development. 1993;64:124–138.
    1. Huesmann LR. An information-processing model for the development of aggression. Aggressive Behavior. 1988;14:13–24.
    1. Huizinga D, Elliott DS. Reassessing the reliability and validity of self-report delinquency measures. Journal of Quantitative Criminology. 1986;2:293–327.
    1. Jones SM, Brown JL, Aber JL. Two-year impacts of a universal school-based social-emotional and literacy intervention: An experiment in translational developmental research. Child Development. 2011;82:533–554.
    1. Kline RB. Beyond significance testing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2004.
    1. Kusche CA, Greenberg MT. The PATHS curriculum. Seattle, WA: Developmental Research and Programs; 1994.
    1. Larsen RW, Angus RM. Adolescents’ development of skills for agency in youth programs: Learning to think strategically. Child Development. 2011;82:277–294.
    1. Lochman JE. Self- and peer perceptions and attributional biases of aggressive and nonaggressive boys in dyadic interactions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1987;55:404–410.
    1. Lochman JE the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Screening of child behavior problems for prevention programs at school entry. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1995;63:549–559.
    1. Lochman JE, Wells KC. The coping power program for preadolescent boys and their parents: Outcome effects at the 1-year follow-up. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 2004;72:571–578.
    1. McMahon RJ, Slough NM . the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Family-based intervention in the Fast Track Program. In: Peters RD, McMahon RJ, editors. Preventing childhood disorders, substance use, and delinquency. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; 1996. pp. 90–110.
    1. Pollak SD, Tolley-Schell SA. Selective attention to facial emotion in physically abused children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 2003;112:323–338.
    1. Preacher KJ, Kelley K. Effect size measures for mediation models: Quantitative strategies for communicating indirect effects. Psychological Methods. 2011;16:93–115.
    1. Rabiner DL, Lenhart L, Lochman JE. Automatic versus reflective social problem solving in relation to children’s sociometric status. Developmental Psychology. 1990;26:1010–1016.
    1. Raver CC, Jones SM, Li-Grining C, Zhai F, Bub K, Pressler E. CSRP’s impact on low-income preschoolers’ preacademic skills: Self-regulation as a mediating mechanism. Child Development. 2011;82:362–378.
    1. Ribordy SC, Camras LA, Stefani R, Spaccarelli S. Vignettes for emotion recognition research and affective therapy with children. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology. 1988;17:322–325.
    1. Russell DW, Kahn J, Spoth R, Altmaier EM. Analyzing data from experimental studies: Illustration of a latent variable structural equation modeling approach. Journal of Counseling Psychology. 1998;45:18–29.
    1. Simon HA. Motivational and emotional controls of cognition. Psychological Review. 1967;74:29–39.
    1. Slaby RG, Guerra NG. Cognitive mediators of aggression in adolescent offenders: II. Assessment. Developmental Psychology. 1988;24:580–588.
    1. Weiss B, Dodge KA, Bates JE, Pettit GS. Some consequences of early harsh discipline: Child aggression and a maladaptive social information processing style. Child Development. 1992;63:1321–1335.
    1. Wilson SJ, Lipsey MW. School-based interventions for aggressive and disruptive behavior: Update of a meta-analysis. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 2007;33(Suppl 2S):130–143.

Source: PubMed

Спонсоры и соавторы

Заболевания

Медикаментозные вмешательства

Подписаться