Cargando…

In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior

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...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Horsley, Tako A., de Castro, Bram Orobio, Van der Schoot, Menno
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880233/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19823928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-009-9361-x
_version_ 1782181995649957888
author Horsley, Tako A.
de Castro, Bram Orobio
Van der Schoot, Menno
author_facet Horsley, Tako A.
de Castro, Bram Orobio
Van der Schoot, Menno
author_sort Horsley, Tako A.
collection PubMed
description 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 non-hostile cues, (2) prevent further processing and recall of such schema-inconsistent information, and (3) lead to hostile intent attribution and aggressive responding, disregarding the schema-inconsistent non-hostile information.
format Text
id pubmed-2880233
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2009
publisher Springer US
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-28802332010-06-10 In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior Horsley, Tako A. de Castro, Bram Orobio Van der Schoot, Menno J Abnorm Child Psychol Article 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 non-hostile cues, (2) prevent further processing and recall of such schema-inconsistent information, and (3) lead to hostile intent attribution and aggressive responding, disregarding the schema-inconsistent non-hostile information. Springer US 2009-10-13 2010 /pmc/articles/PMC2880233/ /pubmed/19823928 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-009-9361-x Text en © The Author(s) 2009 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
spellingShingle Article
Horsley, Tako A.
de Castro, Bram Orobio
Van der Schoot, Menno
In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior
title In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior
title_full In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior
title_fullStr In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior
title_full_unstemmed In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior
title_short In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior
title_sort in the eye of the beholder: eye-tracking assessment of social information processing in aggressive behavior
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880233/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19823928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-009-9361-x
work_keys_str_mv AT horsleytakoa intheeyeofthebeholdereyetrackingassessmentofsocialinformationprocessinginaggressivebehavior
AT decastrobramorobio intheeyeofthebeholdereyetrackingassessmentofsocialinformationprocessinginaggressivebehavior
AT vanderschootmenno intheeyeofthebeholdereyetrackingassessmentofsocialinformationprocessinginaggressivebehavior