Adolescents' Executive Function And Peer Rejection: The Mediating Role Of Aggression

The development of peer relationships is both the important background of individual development and one of the important aspects of individual psychological development. Peer rejection, as one of peer relationships, can be construed as encompassing peer behaviors that primarily serve to thwart another's overtures, including ignoring, dismissing, refusing or denying. In research on peer relationships, exploration of the correlated risk factors and mechanisms of peer rejection is one of the most important tasks. Executive function(EF), which has been defined as a set of higher-order prefrontal functions related to goal-oriented behaviors, play central roles in the development of peer relationships. Deficits in EF predicted more negative exchanges with peers(Chiang & Gau, 2014), including peer rejection, peer victimization, social exclusion. In the extant literature, there is evidence for the association between EF and aggression, aggression and peer rejection. Researches indicated that EF and aggression were predictors of peer rejection. Also, aggression predicted more peer rejection. Adolescents who have deficits in EF are more likely to become disruptive in peer interactions, leading to more rejection by peers. The present study would built a mediating model among the adolescents' EF, aggressive behavior and peer rejection.Moreover, there are physical and relational forms in aggression. However, present studies almost all have focused exclusively on physical aggression, to the exclusion of relational aggression. Physical aggression involves overt forms of behaviors like hitting, while relational aggression harms relationships by manipulating and damaging peer relationships like ridiculing(Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Many studies have found that there was specificity of associations between certain types of aggression and healthy development, therefore, the study chose the subtypes of aggression for analyses, respectively.1943 adolescents of junior graduate(mean age 15.32±0.60 years old) from 12 junior high schools in Jinan, were investigated. Executive function were assessed through a mother-reported questionnaire-BRIEF; physical aggression and relational aggression were assessed through a teacher-reported questionnaire-CBCL-T; peer rejection was obtained through peer nomination. The main findings were:1. There was significantly gender difference in working memory, shifting, inhibition, with the scores of girls higher than boys. There was significantly gender difference in physical aggression, relational aggression and peer rejection. The level of boys was significantly more than the number of girls in physical aggression, relational aggression and peer rejection, respectively.2. Significant correlations existed between the working memory, shifting, inhibition and two forms of aggression, peer rejection, and between two forms of aggression and peer rejection.3. Latent structure equation modeling revealed that physical aggression and relational aggression mediated the associations between executive function and peer rejection. There was no gender difference in both mediation models.