Assessing Aggressive Behavior in Children
Abstract
Abstract. It is hypothesized that marginal behavioral deviations, through their aggregation, may generate impressions of discomfort and disturbance, leading in their turn to progressive social seclusion, lower self-esteem, and maladjustment. The article describes an attempt to assess the development of a stable aggressive behavior, by means of a neuro-fuzzy model of the relationships between sociometric predictors (popularity/refusal rates among peers, hyperactivity, prosocial behavior) and yearly variations in physical and verbal aggressive conduct in children. A hardly noticeable initial difference (classification into marginally aggressive and marginally nonaggressive) is sufficient to lead to relevant differences, such as a resilience to change the judged aggressive level in the presence of changes of sociometric predictors for marginally aggressive children only.
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