Preschool Children and Behaviour Problems: A Prospective Study

Toddler/child behaviour problems have received relatively little previous attention. Prior studies have implicated a wide variety of factors in the aetiology of child behaviour problems but many of these factors are correlated and little is known about their independent contributions. Four broad categories of factors have been associated with child behaviour problems: (1) maternal social and economic characteristics; (2) maternal lifestyle; (3) maternal mental state/child-rearing practices; and (4) maternal and child physical health. The study took a sample of 5296 families from the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) for whom 5-year prospective data are available. The major predictors of toddler behaviour problems were the mother's and child's health, and the mother's mental state. The mother's sociostructural characteristics and lifestyle made little or no additional contribution to the prediction models. It is, however, salutary to note that the majority of children who are classified as having high levels of troublesome behaviour do not fall into any of the risk categories. A variety of explanations and interpretations of the data is considered

The influence of media violence on youth

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/83429/1/2003.Anderson_etal.InfluenceofMediaViolenceonYouth.PsychologicalScienceinthePublicInterest.pd

Cognition and Aggression: A Reply to Fowers and Richardson

Fowers and Richardson (1993) charge that our theory of aggression is `infused with unacknowledged liberal individualistic... assumptions which portray humans as... autonomous, strategic agents seeking to achieve pre-given ends' (Abstract), and that these `unacknowledged sociocultural and moral values... distinctly limit its [our theory's] potential for either fully understanding unwanted forms of human aggression or orienting a practical response to them' (p. 354). In this reply we assert that, when stripped of their jargon, none of these criticisms is valid. The theoretical basis for our model is not disguised but has been specified quite openly and precisely. The theory has not been built on an ideological base of how humans should behave but on an empirical foundation of how humans do behave. Fowers and Richardson have invented an ideology for which they have coined the term liberal individualism. We suggest that, if they see some of its characteristics in our theory, it is because humans behave that way, not because the theory was derived from the ideology.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68547/2/10.1177_0959354393033006.pd