A Longitudinal Study On The Development Of Children's Aggressive Behavior And Its Family Determinants Between Age 4 To 5

Aggression is a type of social behavior of relatively high prevalence among children. It is an important aspect of children's personality and social development. Aggression is closely associated with the formation of children's personality and morality, and normally viewed as an important index of individuals' socialization. The development of children's aggressive behaviors has been one of the most important research areas in developmental psychology. Meanwhile, aggression is a complex developmental construct with high continuity. Some children behavior more aggressively than the others and the interindividual difference will keep strongly stable across ages. It is great worthy of probing into the pattern of development and stability of aggressive behaviors in early childhood and research in recent years has increasingly focused on the determinants of individual difference in aggressive behaviors.The purpose of the present study was to investigate the pattern of the development of children's aggressive behaviors during age 4 to 5 and the family determinants. The main methods of measuring children's aggressive behaviors included natural observation and teacher assessment. Family influences involve parent-child relationship, husband-wife relationship and emotional atmosphere, and data concerning them were collected via relevant questionnaires administered to the children's mother. Moreover, we are able to examine cross-lagged reciprocal contributions between aggression and family influences after the stability effects of the variables were controlled.The original sample consisted of 217 children of mean age 4.08 from three urban kindergartens. For the present study, complete data existed for 157 subjects. Dataconcerning aggressive behaviors were obtained via natural observation every 6 months from age 4 to 5, 3 in all and those involving family influences were collected during the time of the first and third observation, administering questionnaires to children's mother.The main findings from the present study are as follows:1. Physical aggression such as destroying and snatching belongings was the most popular form of aggression among 4-5 year old children, while the frequencies of verbal and indirect aggression were relatively low. The overwhelming majority of the aggressive events belonged to proactive and instrumental rather than reactive and hostile aggressive behaviors. Furthermore, the victims of aggression are of the same sex with the doer and the aggressive events can break off automatically.2. Overall, boys engaged in more aggressive behaviors than girls, but girls engaged in significantly more indirect aggression than boys. Boys exhaled more proactive aggressive behaviors, however, most aggressive events were instrumental whether boys or girls are concerned.3. No significant changes were found in the overall level of children's aggression during age 4 to 5 and children of this age showed stable individual differences in aggression.4. Parent-child relationship and husband-wife relationship can predict significantly children's aggressive behaviors during age 4 to 5. There was internal interaction mechanism among family influences, husband-wife relationship influenced children' behaviors via parent-child interaction...