Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Understanding Disruptive Behavior in the Classroom
How does the mind work—and especially how does it learn? Teachers’ instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?
Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology who seek to understand the mind. In this regular American Educator column, we consider findings from this field that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application.
QUESTION: How can we better understand and support children who are highly aggressive?
ANSWER: Aggression has multiple causes and is part of the typical human’s behavioral repertoire. However, a small percentage of children engage in more severe and more frequent aggressive behavior than is typical, and these children may have differences in several mental processes (rooted in genetics and/or their environment) that require treatment. The good news is that most of these children can be helped—if they have access to therapeutic interventions. In this article, our aim is to increase understanding of these differences so that educators can become stronger advocates for connecting these children to mental health services.
Student aggression causes considerable disruption for both peers and teachers. Aggressive students make it harder for their classmates to learn, diminish teacher job satisfaction, and contribute to educator burnout over time.1 This is not just a US problem. A 2019 report examined data from students ages 9 to 17 from 144 countries and found that, on average, one-third of students reported an incident of peer aggression within the previous month.2 Teachers at a school in the United Kingdom actually went on strike due to concerns that their school was unsafe for staff due to pupil violence.3
Psychologists’ definition of aggression matches its everyday usage: aggression is intentional behavior meant to cause either physical or psychological pain.4 Thus, a student who spreads a rumor about another child on social media with the intention of embarrassing her is acting aggressively. That’s true even if the plan backfires, with the aggressor ending up shunned and the target suffering no consequences. But if a student carelessly bumps another child who then falls and breaks his ankle, no aggression has taken place. Intent, not outcome, is everything for defining aggression (though outcome still matters for students and for educators creating a safe, caring environment).
Of course, there is a multitude of reasons why a child might act aggressively. Even though many of us wish this were not true, aggression is a standard human response—in many situations, it’s perfectly normal. Aggression can be used to achieve dominance, be used to acquire resources in situations where they might not otherwise be readily available, and be seen in response to frustration, a threat, or social provocation. So it’s no surprise that many social variables, such as economic deprivation and a high-stress home environment, can increase the risk for aggression.5 But this type of “normal” aggression—and all the potential systemic, historical, environmental, economic, and political causes—is outside the scope of this article. As cognitive scientists, we’re only focusing on how the risk for aggression can also be increased by neuro-cognitive difficulties—and what we can do about those difficulties. Neuro-cognitive difficulties are mental processes mediated by known brain systems that are not working as well as would be expected for a child of a given age. In this article, we’ll discuss four such processes. At the same time, we acknowledge that the divide between systemic, historical, etc., causes of aggression and neuro-cognitive ones is not as clean as our introduction sounds. Neuro-cognitive difficulties can arise from genetics and from the conditions in which a child is living—often both are involved. Regardless of the cause, the core message of our article remains: most highly aggressive children can be helped, especially if the adults around them know about and advocate for therapeutic interventions.
Two indications of the presence of neuro-cognitive difficulties are the severity and the frequency of the aggression (a fight that ends with bruises is very different from a string of fights that end with several people hospitalized). Of course, severe and frequent aggression may indicate a neuro-cognitive difficulty but not a diagnosis—and even these indicators can be ambiguous because they are open to interpretation and have historically been applied with bias. It’s well documented that in our communities and schools, misbehaviors are judged as more serious if they are committed by a Black child rather than a white child.6
Despite the difficulty in interpretation, it is important not to ignore potential neuro-cognitive difficulties. Unfortunately, biases occur here too, as there are strong indications that Black people are far less likely than non-Hispanic white people to receive the mental health services they need.7
The goal of this article is to provide insight into some of the difficulties faced by some children who show high levels of aggression. Our goal is not to explain the aggression of every child or even of the majority of children who show aggression—as noted, there are myriad social and contextual reasons why an individual might be aggressive. Instead, our goal is to help educators understand those individuals—estimated at perhaps 1 to 2 percent of children—who show aggression regularly and whose aggression is more likely to result in significant harm to victims. We hope that increased understanding will lead to better management, including providing the interventions these children need and deserve, and to a calmer and more productive classroom environment.
How Do Psychologists Understand Aggression?
Psychologists distinguish between two types of aggression: instrumental and reactive. Instrumental aggression is chosen to achieve a particular goal. For example, a preschooler might punch a peer to make him relinquish a swing on the playground. Reactive aggression, in contrast, is associated with anger and occurs in response to provocation, a threat, or frustration. Causes of frustration can be varied—from a sense of the injustice of a particular situation to the experience of a classroom computer not turning on.
Both forms of aggression can be within the scope of “healthy” social interactions. We see instrumental aggression when football players try to physically hurt opposing players, or when basketball players seek psychological damage through trash-talking. These are accepted by all involved as part of the games. Moreover, all mammals show reactive aggression if provoked by a strong enough threat (and again, this may be within socially accepted norms). For example, US President Andrew Jackson faced an assassination attempt in 1835 as he left the US Capitol. When the assassin’s gun misfired, Jackson attacked the man with his cane (and survived because the assassin’s second gun also misfired). Many Americans today would likely see that instance of reactive aggression as understandable.
But instrumental or reactive aggression may not be within social norms—that is, either may be out of proportion to the context. Hitting someone with your cane is proportionate if your target just tried to kill you, but not if your target merely criticized your hat.
Is This Typical or Clinical Aggression?
Educators and researchers alike are much more concerned about acts of disproportionate aggression than typical aggression, and isolated acts are not likely to be cause for long-term concern. But when such acts are part of a persistent pattern, they may be a sign of a child in need of significant support. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the widely accepted authority on definitions and diagnostic criteria for mental disorders.8 It lists two diagnoses specifically associated with aggression during childhood: oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder.
Oppositional defiant disorder is seen primarily before age 10, and the symptoms are a combination of angry/irritable mood, vindictiveness, and defiant behavior, all lasting at least six months. Children with this disorder often don’t comply with requests from authority figures, deliberately annoy others, and blame others for their mistakes or misdeeds.
Conduct disorder usually applies to children ages 10 to 18 and is defined by the commission of aggressive acts toward people and animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness, and the violation of community rules (e.g., skipping school or running away from home). These behaviors demonstrate a persistent tendency to violate the rights of others and to flout the rules of society.
A third diagnosis worth mentioning is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Symptoms of ADHD include inattention (difficulty to focus), hyperactivity (excess movement that is not appropriate for the setting), and impulsivity (actions engaged in without thought). Children with ADHD are at increased risk for aggression9 and often also meet criteria for conduct disorder. Up to 70 percent of children with conduct disorder also receive diagnoses of ADHD.
The criteria we listed for oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and ADHD are categories of behavior, and the DSM-5-TR provides guidance about how to interpret everyday behaviors to judge whether they fit any categories. Still, in many respects, these diagnoses are not terribly helpful. Both conduct disorder and oppositional disorder have been used to guide interventions, but neither diagnosis is successful in predicting whether an individual will benefit from any specific intervention. Moreover, possession of a diagnosis does not inevitably mean the individual has neuro-cognitive difficulties. Contextual reasons for aggression—such as being exposed to aggression among peers and/or family members or enduring long-term poverty—can lead to diagnoses in the absence of neuro-cognitive risk. Moreover, many other diagnoses, such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and forms of anxiety disorder, are also associated with at least some increased risk for aggression.
The benefit of a diagnosis is that it increases the chance that the individual will receive the help of mental health professionals. And yet, we must be mindful of the well-established problems of inappropriate diagnosis, particularly of young Black males. For example, compared with their white peers, youth of color are less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and more likely to be diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder, even after controlling for confounding variables (like prior juvenile offenses or adverse experiences). This is problematic because misdiagnosed youth may not have access to needed medications, in-school accommodations, or community-based therapies.1
What Underlies Clinical Aggression?
Because the diagnoses don’t provide much help with respect to guiding interventions, we believe that greater attention should be paid to the range of underlying mental processes that can give rise to an increased risk for aggression rather than the diagnoses per se. A more detailed understanding of these underlying processes offers the promise of more individualized interventions.
Behavioral and neuroscientific data point to four mental processes that, if operating atypically, can lead to aggression. We describe each in turn. Children with heightened levels of aggression most often do not show problems in all four of these processes. Indeed, some may show none. But many clinically aggressive children do show at least one. Just what causes dysfunction in these mental processes is not well understood, although both genetics and the conditions in which a child is living are implicated.
1. Acute threat response. There is a brain system that organizes the basic mammalian response to threat: freezing for mild threats, fleeing for more serious threats, and reactive aggression for strong threats. If all is going well, reactive aggression will only occur in response to extreme threats (perhaps a human attacker or a rabid animal). But there are factors that can increase the responsiveness of this system, making reactive aggression more likely in response to threats that would prompt most people to freeze or flee. These factors can be genetic but also environmental; in particular, exposure to a threatening environment or to abuse.11 Of course, one may then ask what level of exposure is sufficiently toxic to impact brain function? This is a complex issue and is different for each individual. More severe and frequent exposure increase risk, but resilience factors—within the individual, such as their ability to self-regulate their emotions, and within their social environment, such as the availability of supportive family or friends—reduce risk. In the classroom, over-responsiveness of the acute threat response brain system might manifest as explosive rage in response to what for other children would feel like a mild threat, such as being frustrated (perhaps following the denial of a toy or, in an older child, a phone) or being socially challenged by a peer or teacher.
2. Response control/behavioral disinhibition. Considerable evidence points toward the role of the several brain regions in control of behavior.12 This control is necessary when, for example, a child knows she should be attentive to the teacher, but a cute dog is visible outside the classroom window. Problems with response control may increase the risk for aggression,13 but the increase will probably show only if there is already some propensity to be aggressive. For instance, if the child felt the urge to rage or grab another child’s belongings, difficulties in response control make it more likely that the child will actually do those things.
3. Reward- and punishment-based decision-making. Several brain regions are important for reward-based decision-making; these regions allow us to anticipate what a reward or punishment will feel like and respond to rewards or punishments once received. That’s crucial to allow us to make good decisions—that is, to choose the behaviors that will give us the most reward. If these systems are not working well, the individual will make poorer decisions—choosing, for example, a small reward now rather than a much larger reward in the future (like playing truant for the day as opposed to attending school regularly to ensure graduation). Such poorer decision-making increases the risk the individual will engage in aggression and also increases the risk for future substance abuse.14 These problems in judgment may occur over a long period (being truant rather than trying to excel) or a short period (taking a drum from the school band room to play with for the afternoon, even though it’s likely you’ll get caught and face consequences).
4. Empathy. The brain regions important for empathy—specifically, for responding to the distress of other individuals—together with those involved in decision-making, reduce the probability that we will harm others. If these systems are not working well, the individual will be more willing to harm others to achieve their goals.15 They may be more likely to use weapons at school (rather than simply threaten to use them) and continue to attack another child even when that child is attempting to disengage.
What Makes Children Prone to Clinical Aggression?
There are genetic contributions to the risk for aggression,16 which presumably prevent typical functioning of the four mental processes described above.17 However, the details of these contributions—which specific sets of genes play a role and how they influence development—remain mostly unknown.18
There are also many social and environmental variables—including home and community variables (many with systemic, historical, etc., causes) as well as environmental toxins such as lead exposure—that influence brain development and increase the risk for aggression. While there are too many variables to review here, educators should be aware of the potential impact of abuse and neglect. Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse all increase sensitivity of the acute threat response, particularly if the abuse is persistent and severe.19 Neglect (physical and emotional) appears to reduce the brain response to reward.20
How Can We Reduce Clinical Aggression?
When people hear that there is a genetic influence on a propensity to behave aggressively, they sometimes conclude that nothing can be done. The word “genetic” is equated with inevitability. But that’s inaccurate. Consider that there are genetic risk factors for depression and for obesity, but that doesn’t mean children suffering from these health issues cannot be helped.
A number of different interventions may reduce children’s clinical aggression, and they are usefully divided into psychosocial and pharmacological interventions. Note that the ones we describe below were designed by mental health professionals for use by psychologists and/or psychiatrists. Our purpose in describing a few of the more commonly used interventions is to give educators a better understanding of how clinically aggressive children—no matter what the underlying causes are—can be helped.*
Psychosocial interventions. Two main psychosocial interventions used for aggression, as well as anger/irritability, are cognitive-behavioral therapy and parent management training.21 Cognitive-behavioral therapy targets deficits in emotion regulation and social problem-solving skills that are associated with aggressive behavior.22 Interventions are conducted with the child and use structured strategies to produce changes in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.23 Common techniques include helping the child learn to identify the antecedents and consequences of their aggressive behavior, learning strategies for recognizing angry feelings and regulating expressions of anger, generating new ways of thinking about things that trigger aggression, and modeling and rehearsing socially appropriate behaviors that can replace angry and aggressive reactions. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been successful in helping children who have experienced abuse; it seems most effective for children who have difficulty managing the acute threat response.24
Parent management training aims to change family interactions, specifically to reduce parenting behaviors that prompt the child’s irritability and aggression. It assumes that some forms of irritable behavior and aggression are reinforcing for the child. For example, a child who doesn’t want to go to school (perhaps because another child has been teasing him) may throw a violent tantrum. The parent concludes, “We can’t send him to school like this,” and allows him to stay home—and the child learns that a violent tantrum allows an escape.
During parent management training, parents (or the primary caregivers) are taught to identify the function of maladaptive behavior, to give praise for appropriate behavior, to communicate directions effectively, to ignore maladaptive attention-seeking behavior, and to use consistent consequences for disruptive behaviors. Parent management training is conducted with parents, though sometimes in conjunction with their children.25 It primarily targets aggression the child learned through previous less-than-optimal social interactions. It is not specifically designed to address the mental process difficulties described above (acute threat response, disinhibition, decision-making, and empathy). However, by reducing some particularly maladaptive parenting strategies (e.g., harsh and inconsistent discipline, such as excessive scolding and corporal punishment), it may reduce environmentally induced hyper-responsiveness to acute threats (and thus reduce irritability and/or rage-based aggression).
Considerable research indicates that cognitive-behavioral therapy and parent management training reduce irritability and aggression.26 These improvements in child behavior can be stable over time and prevent antisocial behavior in adulthood.27 However, they do not benefit all children equally. This may reflect that these interventions have yet to be optimized to address other difficulties that some aggressive children struggle with. Recent work demonstrated that children who did not benefit from one of the most successful forms of parent management training showed particular difficulty in their empathic responding to the distress of others.28 Interventions will need to be adjusted individually to help all children.
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