Processing and the development of conduct problems

Aspects of social cognition and social information-processing have been studied intensively in recent years, as researchers and clinicians search for the underlying perceptual and mental processes that give rise to aggressive behaviour and conduct problems. What sets this period of inquiry apart from earlier research is the systematic effort now being made to integrate and synthesize the various pieces of the perceptual–attributional puzzle into coherent models depicting the interface of cognition, affect and behaviour. Our goal in writing the present chapter is not to fashion yet another synthetic model, but rather to scrutinize recent research in terms of its fit with current models, and the extent to which emerging findings amplify, contradict or are mute with respect to the prevailing theories. We will rely heavily on Dodge's social information-processing model (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge et al., 1986), as it has provided perhaps the best known integrative perspective.

Dodge's model depicts a sequential series of steps in the processing of information in a specific social situation. It is a heuristic for summarizing distinctive perceptual, problem-solving and evaluative components thought to lead to the activation of a particular response or set of responses. Variations in these social cue-elicited patterns of activation are presumed to explain within-individual responding across differing situations and cross-individual responding within similar situations (Dodge, 1993).