A Study On The Characteristics Of Hot Cognition Of Children With Different Aggression/Victim Groups

In psychological science, the term "hot cognition" refers to cognition with an affect or attitude. Compared with the way we represent, reasoning, and retrieve social knowledge, these relatively intellectual, information-driven processes are sometimes regarded as "cold" cognition, mostly in order to distinguish them from the more motivational, affect-laden processes of "hot" cognition. Controversy about the relation of emotion and cognition has been lasting, after long debate, especially the evidence from affective neurology recently holds out interaction between emotion and cognition. The study on hot cognition makes for integration between emotion and cognition, focusing on the field of cold/hot execute function, cold/hot social cognition and cold/hot theory of mind, progress of whose approves that VPC is just the vital brain region/neural base of affect and cognition integration.Aggressive behavior has been a hot topic in the field of developmental psychology, and researchers also pay more attention to victims and aggressive-victims. Social information processing theory(SIP)and cold cognition theory are two main theories prevailing with regard to the aggressor/bully'social cognition ability, whose paradigms can elicit two different images: social skill deficit children and social skill fine children, particularly, some theoretical divergences with respective evidence. Integrated Model of Emotion Processes and Cognition in Social Information Processing(IEC-SIP) exhibits superiority in integrating the two aforementioned theories. Particularly, besides integrating researches in social information processing and emotion-regulation, IEC-SIP uses studies on VPC lesion for reference.Employing IEC-SIP, the current study firstly explores affective decision-making(response access and decision stage) of children with different aggression/victim groups, and then identify the features of hot cognition of children from six facets, which are event-affect-reaction connection, affective cognition, hot theory of mind, empathy, affective anticipation and affective nature of companion relationship cognition, by the way examining the links between hot cognition listed above and affective decision-making.In the first study, using the way of companion nomination and scales compiled by Masten and Salmivalli, the author first selected out 262 subjects, which are categoried into aggressors/victims and non-involved matching by grade and gender. A self-designed computer program of standard gambling task was used to compare the features of affective decision-making of children with different aggression/victim groups, comparing from decision-making strategy, decision-making speed and conception knowledge stage, with decision-making strategy comprising net difference of advantage-disadvantage selection, ratio of impaired decision-making and decision-making difference(style) of advantage-disadvantage selection and frequence of rewards and punishment. The results show that the representation of non-involved children are better than any other kinds of children whether in difference(net score) of advantage-disadvantage selection or in ratio of impaired decision-making, and aggressive victim's affective decision-making scores are only worse than non-involved children's, indirect-aggressive children's shows strong learning effect during latter stage. Victim's and direct-aggressive children's decision-making scores are the worst in overall trials, direct-aggressive children's displays the couse of upgrading in prophase then descending in anaphase, and victim's exhibits learning effect of appreciably upgrading. In acquirement style, all kinds of children manifest finally the trend of selecting more from advantage doors, but non-involved children display earliest and largest scope, aggressive victim second best. In frequency style, direct-aggressive children, aggressive victim children and non-involved children select more from choices of high frequence but smaller punishment, whose risk is low and steady. In decision-making speed, victims' speed is lower than other four kinds of children. In conception knowledge stage, victims's gambling consciousness level is lower, but decision-making of non-involved children precedes to other children whether on consciousness level 1 or on consciousness level 2.Study two aims to find out the features of event-affect-reaction connection of children with different aggression/victim groups. A self-designed computer program containing priming experiment, Stroop task and Wason cards selection task was used to test characteristics of event-affect automatic connection, automatic reaction to affective event and social reasoning of aggressors/victims'. The results see that response time of children in incompatible tasks was longer than in compatible tasks only for non-involved children, indicating non-involved children have event-affect automatic connection, and aggressive victims probably have event-affect connection compared with indirect-aggressive children. In test of automatic reaction to affective event, response time of all kinds of children to negative event words was significantly longer than to neutral event words, implying aggressive children didn't lack automatic reaction to threatening event. Moreover, both pure aggressors and pure victims had stronger automatic reaction to positive event. Social reasoning test showed that there was up to wondrously significant facilitation from abstract reasoning to social reasoning for non-involved children, but only aggressive victims have faint facilitation among different aggression/victim groups.In study three, the author made an inquiry on affective cognition differences among different aggression/victim groups. A self-designed computer program and story tests were used to test three indices such as facial expression recognition, affective attribution and sensitivity to affective perception. The results indicated that scores of children were coherent in three indices, especiallynon-involved children's were the best or second best. It is relatively inconsistent that sad facial expression recognition mean of direct-aggressive children is the worst but whose score on sad affective attribution is the best; indirect-aggressive children's score on rage facial expression recognition is relatively worse but the best on rage affective attribution; victims' sad facial expression recognition mean is the best but the worst on sad affective attribution.Study four mainly explored the characteristics of hot theory of mind of children with different aggression/victim groups. Administering the Iron Task and the Faux Pas Task, the Envy Task and the Schadenfreude Task, the author investigated children's hot theory of mind ability. The results see as a whole indirect-aggressive children's scores are the best except for second best on the Iron Task; non-involved children's are almost second best except for the best on the Iron Task; victims' are almost the worst. In addition, the relationship between decision-making and Faux Pas Task for indirect-aggressive children is positive but negative between decision-making and the Iron Task.Empathy process was examined in study five by using story tests and five ratings scale. The indices of cognitive and affective perspective taking, empathy concern and emotional reaction were tested to study perspective taking and empathy reaction. The results indicated that direct-aggressive children's perspective taking ability and empathy reaction were both low level, indirect-aggressive children's perspective taking ability and empathy concern were high level but whose emotional reaction was low level, so aggressive children's empathy reaction was low level. Characteristics of aggressive victims was opposite to indirect-aggressive children's, showing low perspective taking ability but the highest level emotional reaction. Moreover, the relationship between decision-making and the whole perspective taking for indirect-aggressive children was positive, and the relationship between decision-making and emotional reaction and empathy reaction was negative for non-involved children.Study six aims to find out the features of affective anticipation of children with different aggression/victim groups by using story tests and outcome perception scale on bullying to explore children's ability to differentiate regular behavior from offending behavior and anticipate affective outcome of behavior. The results see that the situations containing regular-offending behavior, whose difference judged by non-involved children is significant and greater, are more than any other kinds of children, implying that non-involved children have better ability to apperceive regular behavior and detect/recognize the behaviors which probably induce others' rage/angry. Even if in the same impairment or unimpairment decision-making groups, non-involved children's ability to apperceive regular behavior are better. On outcome consciousness, direct-aggressive children's outcome consciousness is lower than any other kinds of children's.In study seven, the author tried to explore the features of affective nature of companion relationship cognition of children with different aggression/victim groups. A self-designed computer program which comprise eight dialogue scenes about different affective companion relationships, was used to test exactness of affective companion relationship judgement. And some questions were used to study children's affective nature of companion relationship cognition. The results indicated that direct-aggressive children's exactness of affective companion relationship judgement was significantly lower than non-involved children's. On affective nature of companion relationship cognition, indirect-aggressive children adopted eclectic cognition, victims agreed extremely identify with instrumental nature affective companion relationship, aggressive victims agreed extremely to instrumental nature and didn't agreed extremely to affective nature of affective companion relationship, and non-involved children agreed extremely identify with affective nature, whereas direct-aggressive children didn't care about affective relationship with common companion. In conclusion, children with different aggression/victim groups manifested distinct characteristics of affective nature of companion relationship cognition.As a whole, the results of seven studies show that the findings of characteristics of event-affect-reaction connection in study two and affective decision-making were most coherent, so the implicit hot cognition, affect-cognition connection, perhaps was an important factor of affective decision-making.