Early Childhood Aggressive Behavior

Aggression in early childhood is often a result of various complex factors such as media, exposure to violence at home, aggressive temperaments, insecure attachment and development issues. In contemporary society there is an immense increase in children’s exposure to aggressive behaviour through the media, television and video games, exposing children to a normalised perspective towards this violent behaviour.

A growing number of researchers have revealed that violent video games increase aggressive cognition, hostile feelings, aggressive thoughts, physiological arousal, and aggressive behaviour (Anderson, 1997,Barlett, Anderson, & Swing, 2009; Giumetti & Markey, 2007; Sherry, 2001; Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004) and decrease prosocial behaviour …show more content…
Research on physical aggression indicate that most children have initiated the use of physical aggression during infancy, and most will learn to use alternatives in the following years ( Tremblay, 2004) , while the frequency of children physical aggression is the highest during the preschool years (Tremblay, 2004), and those children who show high levels of physical aggression during the elementary school years are at greatest risk of physical violence during adolescence and adulthood. (Tremblay, 2004). The importance of addressing aggressive behaviour in children is crucial for the development of positive relationships in the …show more content…
Instrumental aggressiveness is usually goal directed and is displayed through snatching or defending toys, pre school aged children believe that the first person to possess an object has ownership rights (Friedman and nearly, 2008), and behave accordingly to situations and conflicts over possessions that they wish to have control