Source+Nine

DePaul, Joaquın, Alicia Perez-Albeniz, Amaia Ormaechea, Anabel Vergera, and Barbara Torres-Gomez De Cadiz. "Aggression Inhibition in High- and Low-Risk Subjects for Child Physical Abuse: Effects of a Child’s Hostile Intent and the Presence of Mitigating Information." //Risk for Child Physical Abuse// 32 (2006): 216-30. //Wiley InterScience//. Wiley-Liss Inc., 21 Feb. 2006. Web. 14 Aug. 2012.

1. Based on aggression literature, several authors have suggested that physically abusive parents lack empathy for their children.

2. For individuals at high risk for child physical abuse, the presence of pain cues was associated with higher levels of aggressive responding.

3. High-risk, compared to low-risk, participants for child physical abuse showed more aggression only when mitigating information was provided.

4. Results confirmed that high-risk subjects for child physical abuse do not integrate or use situational information to modify their interpretation about a child’s behavior as negatively intended, threatening or provocative.

5. Following models pertaining to aggression and child physical abuse, results seemed to suggest that at-risk subjects for child physical abuse present troubles to modify a treat-oriented schemata or present a tendency to maintain a hostile intent perception regardless of the situational information.

6. Results derived from the negative condition suggested that all the participants (both high- and low-risk subjects) present more aggressive behaviors when the child’s behavior is interpretable as negatively intended, threatening or provocative.

7. Moreover, while high-risk subjects for child physical abuse aggressed with the same intensity in the negative without mitigating information condition and in conditions where mitigating information was provided, low-risk subjects for child physical abuse tended to aggress with more intensity in the negative without mitigating information conditions than in the conditions where mitigating information was provided.

8. Similarly, several studies have shown that a reasonable explanation (provided before provocation or immediately after provocation) for a frustrating event reduces aggression toward a frustrator.

9. This model suggests that abusive and high-risk subjects, relative to comparison subjects, would fail to adequately integrate child-related information, which may result in an inflexibility (rigidity) in their evaluations and attributions of children’s behavior.

10. They proposed that it was possible that if mitigating information was imbedded in a more extensive story description, or was more ambiguous, the high-risk mothers would have greater difficulty recognizing the material as important and the observed differences might have been greater.

11. Results derived from those studies indicated that attributionally relevant information about provoking circumstances does not influence the evaluations and aggression of people who learn of mitigation after being provoked.

12. High-risk participants for child physical abuse differed from low-risk participants in their aggressive behavior when mitigating information was provided both before and during the task.

13. It was expected that only low-risk participants for child physical abuse would integrate mitigating information and therefore would aggress less to the child.

14. Participants aggressed similarly when mitigating information was provided both before and during the child’s misbehavior.

15. These findings, moreover, support findings presented by Bugental [1991, 1993] concerning situations in which an individual, objectively, has control over the other person but perceives threat in the other person and, therefore, makes efforts to assert or regain control by selecting aggressive responses.