Developmental cascades of peer rejection, social information processing biases, and aggression during middle childhood

Abstract

This study tested a developmental cascade model of peer rejection, social information processing (SIP), and aggression using data from 585 children assessed at 12 time points from kindergarten through Grade 3. Peer rejection had direct effects on subsequent SIP problems and aggression. SIP had direct effects on subsequent peer rejection and aggression. Aggression had direct effects on subsequent peer rejection. Each construct also had indirect effects on each of the other constructs. These findings advance the literature beyond a simple mediation approach by demonstrating how each construct effects changes in the others in a snowballing cycle over time. The progressions of SIP problems and aggression cascaded through lower liking, and both better SIP skills and lower aggression facilitated the progress of social preference. Findings are discussed in terms of the dynamic, developmental relations among social environments, cognitions, and behavioral adjustment.

Figure 1

Conceptual and analytic developmental cascade model of SIP, peer rejection, and aggression. Paths between constructs were constrained to be constant across time (e.g., kindergarten SIP to aggression path constrained to be equal to grades 1–3 SIP to aggression paths) and were then systematically freed to test the plausibility of the time constraints. Ethnicity (African American vs. non-African American), sex, study site, study cohort, and SES were modeled as exogenous covariates, predicting all study variables. Each study construct was modeled as predicting all subsequent measures of that construct (paths not shown).