In the eye of the beholder: Eye-tracking assessment of social information processing in aggressive behavior

# The Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Acording to social information processing theories, aggressive children are hypersensitive to cues of hostility and threat in other people’s behavior. However, even though there is ample evidence that aggressive children over-interpret others ’ behaviors as hostile, it is unclear whether this hostile attribution tendency does actually result from overattending to hostile and threatening cues. Since encoding is posited to consist of rapid automatic processes, it is hard to assess with the selfreport measures that have been used so far. Therefore, we used a novel approach to investigate visual encoding of social information. The eye movements of thirty 10–13 year old children with lower levels and thirty children with higher levels of aggressive behavior were monitored in real time with an eyetracker, as the children viewed ten different cartoon series of ambiguous provocation situations. In addition, participants answered questions concerning encoding and interpretation. Aggressive children did not attend more to hostile cues, nor attend less to non-hostile cues than non-aggressive children. Contrary, aggressive children looked longer at non-hostile cues, but nonetheless attributed more hostile intent than their non-aggressive peers. These findings contradict the traditional bottom-up processing hypotheses that aggressive behavior would be related with failure to attend to non-hostile cues. The findings seem best explained by topdown information processing, where aggressive children’s pre-existing hostile intent schemata (1) direct attention towards schema inconsistent nonhostile cues, (2) prevent further processing and recall of such schema-inconsistent information, and (3) lead to hostil

Emotion Coregulation in Mother-Child Dyads: A Dynamic Systems Analysis of Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Few studies have investigated patterns of emotion coregulation in families of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or contrasted the ways in which their emotion coregulation patterns differ from families of typically developing (TD) children. To address this gap, we used a dynamic systems approach to compare flexible structure and emotional content of coregulation between mothers and children (3-7 years) with ASD (n = 47) and TD children (n = 26). Mother-child play interactions in the home were videotaped and emotion-engagement states were coded in micro-level 5-s intervals based on behavioral and affective expressions. Analyses indicated that mother-child dyads in the ASD group spent more time than dyads in the TD group in mismatched emotion-engagement states (e.g., child negative/mother positive), and children with ASD spent more time than TD children engaged exclusively with objects. Mother-child dyads in the TD group stayed longer in mutual positive engagement states. Compared to dyads in the TD group, mother-child dyads in the ASD group exhibited greater flexibility (i.e., a wider range of emotional-engagement states, more frequent changes in states, and less time in each state). These findings suggest that mothers and their children with ASD do not sustain dyadic positive engagement patterns in a low-stress environment. Findings confirmed the preference of children with ASD for objects over social partners, even when they are at home with their mothers, and elucidated a challenging mother-child interactional style. Results have implications for mother-child interventions aimed at regulating negative emotional states and sustaining positive ones in families raising children with ASD

Overlapping phenotypes in autism spectrum disorder and developmental coordination disorder: A cross-syndrome comparison of motor and social skills

Motor and social difficulties are often found in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), to varying degrees. This study investigated the extent of overlap of these problems in children aged 7-10 years who had a diagnosis of either ASD or DCD, compared to typically-developing controls. Children completed motor and face processing assessments. Parents completed questionnaires concerning their child’s early motor and current motor and social skills. There was considerable overlap between the ASD and DCD groups on the motor and social assessments, with both groups more impaired than controls. Furthermore, motor skill predicted social functioning for both groups. Future research should consider the relationships between core symptoms and their consequences in other domains

Simultaneously testing parenting and social cognitions in children at-risk for aggressive behavior problems

Contains fulltext : 121635.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)In this cross-sectional study we examined a model in which parenting, child social information processing and self-perception are simultaneously tested as risk factors associated with aggression. Sex and ethnicity were tested as moderators of associations. The sample consisted of 206 4th grade children in the Netherlands. Parents reported on parenting, parent–child relationship, and reactive and proactive aggression whereas children reported on self-perception and social information processing. Results give support for both child social cognitive functioning and parenting as risk factors associated with aggressive behavior: For all children, a positive parent–child relationship was associated with less aggression, negative parenting was related to less positive self-perception, and deficits in social-cognitive functioning were related to aggression. Multigroup analyses showed ethnic similarities and sex differences in patterns of associations, which might suggest personalized tailor-made interventions for aggressive behavior.10 p

Social knowledge and social reasoning abilities in a neurotypical population and in children with Down syndrome.

Social knowledge refers to the ability to analyze and reason about social situations in relation to social rules which are essential to the development of social skills and social behavior. The present research aimed to assess these abilities with the "Social resolution task" in a neurotypical population of 351 children (4 to 12 years) and 39 young adults, and in 20 participants (10 to 18 years) with Down syndrome. Results showed that young children aged 4 to 6 were well able to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate social behavior but they had significantly more difficulties in judging and identifying social cues for the transgression of conventional rules than for moral ones. Between age 4 and 8, their social reasoning was mainly based on factual answers, while older children showed significantly more social awareness, making more reference to emotional and social consequences for the "victims". The representation of a more universal applicability of social rules seemed to develop later in childhood, as of age 8. In contrast, participants with Down syndrome exhibited significantly more difficulties in judging, identifying and reasoning about transgression of social rules without social awareness. In conclusion, the results have shown that social reasoning abilities develop throughout childhood. Social awareness seems to have a long developmental course, which includes a sensibility about welfare and intersubjectivity, critical for the development of prosocial behavior. The clinical population with difficulties in social interaction and socio-emotional behavior could benefit from an early assessment and from learning social reasoning abilities to improve social skills