Children's and adolescents' aggressive behavior in context: The development and application of aggressive problem-solving strategies

Social-cognitive information-processing models have frequently been used as a reference in studying children's and adolescents' aggressive behavior. According to these models, aggressive behavior is considered to be one way for children and adolescents to cope with the social problems of everyday life. A high level of aggressive behavior is traced to deficiencies in processing social information (e.g. in encoding social cues, interpreting situations, adopting goals, producing strategies, and evaluating responses), leading to an increased likelihood of employing aggressive problem-solving strategies. Emotions and physiological factors ave also suggested to contribute to the social-cognitive information-processing activities promoting aggression. The development of aggressively biased ways of processing social information is seen to be related to numerous biological and environmental factors. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.