A Cognitive-Ecological Approach to Serving Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: Application to Aggressive Behavior

Recent advances in understanding the learning, maintenance, prevention, and treatment of problematic social behaviors in childhood and adolescence have emphasized the central role of the child's developing cognitions (Beck, 1999; Boxer & Dubow, 2002; Compton et al., 2004; Crick & Dodge, 1994; Durlak, Rubin, & Kahng, 2001; Eron, 1994; Guerra & Huesmann, 2004; Huesmann, 1998; Lochman & Lenhart, 1995). The developing individual is seen as an active participant in a learning process linking individual (e.g., irritability, impulsivity) and environmental (e.g., community violence, poverty) risk factors to social behavior through cognitive structures, such as beliefs, rules, and schemas, and skills, such as attention, attribution, and problem solving. This cognitive-ecological view posits that problem behaviors emerge through interactions between individual predisposition and contextual socialization and are maintained over time and across situations by cognitive "styles" that are shaped by direct and observational learning experiences. Cognitive styles are learned across multiple contexts and, in turn, influence responding across these contexts. The term "ecological" refers to the nested contexts of child development, providing a stage for social interactions, opportunities for social engagement, and a normative or regulatory structure that includes costs and benefits of distinct courses of action (Guerra & Huesmann).Consider a boy who grows up in an environment laced with harsh and hostile encounters with parents, teachers, and peers. Over time, it is likely that these negative experiences will influence, at least to some degree, his self-perception ("nobody likes me"), perceptions of others ("they have it in for me"), and beliefs about aggression ("it's OK to hit and be mean-everybody does it"). Under these conditions, it is also likely that he will develop characteristic biases in social information processing that are based on the presumption that others act with hostile intent, leading to increased perceptions of vulnerability and anger, and a greater likelihood of aggressive retaliation. For example, Dodge and col leagues (Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1997; Dodge, Pettit, Bates, & Valente, 1995) have shown that children who experience harsh parental discipline or are physically abused during their early childhood years are more likely to attribute hostile intent to peers in ambiguous situations and behave more aggressively than their nonexposed peers.If cognitive patterns linked to emotional reactions, such as anger, and behaviors, such as aggression, are learned over time, then it is also the case that they can be "unlearned." In essence, this is a fundamental premise of cognitive-behavioral interventions; that is, modifying dysfunctional cognition will, in turn, lead to positive effects on emotional and behavioral adjustment. However, because the primary emphasis is on the individual's cognitive deficits and distortions and how these can be modified, less attention has focused on the contribution of the child's total developmental ecology to the emergence and maintenance of targeted cognitions (Boxer & Butkus, in press; Durlak et al., 2001).Both clinical and psycho-educational interventions typically are designed to change how children think in response to problematic social situations, with less attention focused on modifying contextual influences on these emerging cognitions. The assumption is that once children correct errors in thinking or reduce deficits in social information-processing skills, they will be better equipped to navigate their social and emotional worlds, resulting in corresponding gains in adjustment. Although cognitive-behavioral interventions also address situational factors that have established or are maintaining specific symptoms or behaviors (e.g., functional analysis; Haynes & O'Brien, 1990), they focus primarily on immediate situational contingencies rather than overarching developmental contexts. …