Читать книгу The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development - Группа авторов - Страница 35

Also investigated were child attributes that were conceptualized as risk factors, that is, characteristics that were hypothesized to increase the likelihood of adverse developmental outcomes. Prominent among those investigated were particular behavioral propensities (e.g., aggressive, withdrawn behavior), habitual reaction patterns (e.g., difficult temperament), and enduring maladies (e.g., childhood depression).

Early investigators established that aggressive behavior was quite stable, especially in boys (Olweus, 1979), and follow‐back longitudinal studies showed that delinquent adolescents often were aggressive during childhood (Mulligan et al., 1963). Subsequent longitudinal studies further clarified potential outcomes by showing that early aggressiveness not only predicted later misconduct but also diverse social dysfunctions. To illustrate, researchers followed assaultive fourth‐graders and a sample of matched controls over many years and found that the aggressive children were more likely to develop a range of dysfunctions in adolescence and adulthood, including criminal arrests, teenage motherhood, and psychiatric care (Cairns & Cairns, 1994). Researchers also drew distinctions between direct and indirect aggression (Lagerspetz et al., 1988) and found that both direct and indirect forms of aggression were predictive of maladjustment (Crick, 1996).

Initial research on withdrawn behavior failed to make clear whether it was a stable child characteristic and one that predicted adjustment difficulties (Morris et al., 1954). Later theory and evidence led to the identification of solitary subtypes that were differentiated by children’s propensities to engage in solitary‐anxious, unsociable, or socially avoidant behaviors (Coplan et al., 2013). Longitudinal findings revealed that some forms of withdrawn behavior became increasingly stable as children matured and were predictive of adjustment problems (Ladd, 2006). Conclusions remain tentative, but extant evidence implied that solitary‐anxious behavior, in particular, anteceded the development of interpersonal and internalizing problems (Gazelle & Ladd, 2003).

Certain configurations of child temperament were investigated as risk factors, particularly those characterized as low in extroversion‐surgency (e.g., shy, inhibited) and low in effortful control or high in negative affectivity (e.g., under controlled, “difficult”). Findings suggested that, whereas inhibited children were likely to develop internalizing problems, those deficient in regulation abilities, such as effortful control, tended to develop externalizing problems (Rothbart et al., 2011). Children disposed toward negative affectivity had a higher probability of developing aggressive behavior or conduct problems (Mathiesen & Prior, 2006). Overall, evidence suggested that temperaments skewed toward characteristics such as emotionality, impulsiveness, and irritability increased children’s risk for adjustment difficulties (Rothbart, 2007; Rothbart et al., 2011).