Research: Why do preschoolers become aggressive?
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Not all children who manifest aggression have the same underlying causes. Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have found that some preschool children who are prone to attacks of aggression show low verbal abilities, while others, with similar behavior, are easily excitable.
The data obtained show that children who have different causes that provoke the same behavior need different approaches to treatment.
" Aggressive reactions are natural behavior that is characteristic of early childhood, but from a child who begins to attend kindergarten or school, adults expect changes in behavior, ability to control their emotions," says Dr. Lisa Gatske-Kopp. - If the child can not cope with this himself, the adults should pay attention to this and be sure to help him. Otherwise, ignoring the signals that indicate problems in the emotional sphere can lead to serious problems in the future: absenteeism, violent actions towards peers, drug addiction, and sometimes suicide. "
Dr. Gatske-Kopp, in cooperation with a team of colleagues, asked the tutors of ten pre-school institutions for primary schools to assess the degree of aggression of children on a six-point scale. With the help of the information obtained, specialists analyzed the behavioral responses of two groups of children. In a group with a high degree of aggressiveness, 207 preschoolers got involved, a smaller number of children entered the group with a low level of aggression - 132 people.
Both groups were subjected to neurobiological analysis, whose purpose was to find out the differences that underlie the behavior of aggressive and less aggressive children.
To do this, the scientists conducted tests with children, during which they checked their academic and cognitive skills and revealed the level of vocabulary, and also found out how much the experimental developed spatial reasoning and memory.
Educators gave an assessment of the degree of disobedience, sadness, social skills and the level of self-control of each child.
The experts tried to understand how emotional and physical reactions to emotional and physical reactions in aggressive and non-aggressive children are interrelated.
According to the researchers, the study of this problem made it possible to understand how emotional and cognitive treatment affects the development of aggression in children.
In particular, experts found that 90% of aggressive children are characterized by the presence of low verbal abilities and mild physiological excitability.
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