The relationship between second grade executive function performance and the development of aggressive behavior in elementary school-aged children

This study investigates the association between neurocognitive dysfunction in terms of executive function at age eight and the development of aggressive behavior in a classroom context over time in an urban epidemiological defined sample of elementary school-aged children from eight to thirteen years.; This study proposed that poor performance in elements of executive function: working memory, impulsivity inhibition, and perseverative response to social stimulus, can predict the change of aggressive behavior over time. A set of neuropsychological tests, the Digit Span Tests (DST), the visual Continuous Performance Test-X (CPT-X) commission errors, and perseverative errors in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) were employed to assess working memory, impulsivity inhibition, and perseverative responses, respectively. Classroom aggressive behavior was measured by Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation-Revised (TOCA-R). By treating repeated measures of aggression score (from grade 2 to grade 7) as response variable and second grade neuropsychological test performance as independent variable, a series of random effect models were fitted for hypotheses testing, adjusting for the effects of gender, ethnicity, and intervention. Considering the developmental lag of executive function, fourth grade perseverative error was also included in hypothesis testing.; The results show that performance on both DST and CPT-X commission errors tests are significantly associated with teacher-rated aggression scores (p < 0.01). A significant association between aggression and perseverative error score is found in fourth grade (p < 0.01) instead of second grade.; The interaction effects between DST scores and grade on teacher-rated aggression are highly significant across three version of DST (e.g. raw score, forward score and scaled score) (p < 0.01), whereas the interaction effect between visual CPT-X degraded commission error score and grade on aggression reaches a borderline significance level (p = 0.06). DST scores do not predict aggression score at second grade but do predict aggression scores at sixth and seventh grades across three versions of DST scores (raw score, forward score, and scaled score). On the other hand, CPT-X degraded commission error score significantly predicts aggression score throughout childhood, but better predict aggression at grade 2 than at grades 6 and 7. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...