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Gender Differences in Physical Aggression and Associated Developmental Correlates in a Sample of Canadian Preschoolers
Author(s) -
Lussier Patrick,
Corrado Raymond,
Tzoumakis Stacy
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
behavioral sciences and the law
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1099-0798
pISSN - 0735-3936
DOI - 10.1002/bsl.2035
Subject(s) - aggression , psychosocial , psychology , developmental psychology , poison control , injury prevention , early childhood , latent class model , longitudinal study , human factors and ergonomics , demography , medicine , psychiatry , statistics , mathematics , environmental health , pathology , sociology
Recent studies have indicated that gender differences in children's aggressive behavior emerge during the preschool years and that these differences are relatively stable during childhood. The current study assesses whether these gender differences can be observed when a multidimensional measure of aggression from the ongoing Vancouver Longitudinal Study on the psychosocial development of children is utilized. Specifically, the level of physical aggression (PA) in three cohorts of children (aged three, four, and five years) from the initial 338 families in the Wave I data recruited for this study was analyzed using a series of constrained and unconstrained latent class models. Three latent classes of physically aggressive children were identified (low, moderate, and high level), with boys being over‐represented in the highly aggressive group and being five times more likely than girls to show high levels of aggression. No age effects were detected, suggesting gender differences from the age of three years onward. The correlates of PA were similar for both boys and girls. Particularly important, a small subgroup of highly aggressive boys emerged from the study showing a clinical profile similar to Moffitt's life‐course‐persistent antisocial pattern. Such a group was not identified for girls. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.