| "Affective Processing and Aggression in At-Risk Youth" is an exploratory, hypothesis-deriving study looking at "hot" and "cold" aggression in behaviorally disturbed youth. At-risk youth within the community were identified as either proactively or reactively aggressive via an initial screening process and were administered cognitive testing that assessed affective facial recognition and information processing while emotionally stimulated. These youth were also administered a semi-structured diagnostic interview and asked to discuss prior aggressive acts. Youth within the sample who demonstrated greater cold aggression were found to endorse a higher degree of callousness, while hot aggressors made fewer errors in identifying fearful facial expressions and performed better when emotionally stimulated. Thus, this study's results suggest that coldly aggressive youth will endorse a greater degree of callousness. The results also suggest that reactive aggressors may exhibit greater comorbidity for anxiety, which leads to hyper-arousal of emotions and emotion recognition. While such a phenomenon can prove advantageous in chaotic and unpredictable environments for purposes of self preservation, such individuals may be over-primed to become overwhelmed by their own emotions and perceive others' neutral emotions negatively. |
