FAMILY-RELATIONAL SCHEMAS AND VICTIMIZATION BY PEERS

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton FL

Investigators

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (adapted from the investigator's abstract): Chronic victimization by peers during childhood leads to serious adjustment difficulties. This research explores the possibility that children's cognitive representations of parent-child interaction affect the probability of abuse by peers. It is hypothesized that some children represent crucial parent-child interactions in the form of a "victim schema" - by perceiving the parent as exercising forms of control likely to imperil the child's sense of self and by perceiving the self as helpless and defeated - and that these children are at risk for peer victimization. Children with such a schema presumably come to think, feel, and behave during peer interactions in ways that invite victimization (e.g., by lacking confidence in assertion, by nervously anticipating hostile treatment, and by responding to aversive treatment in self-defeating ways). Participants in this longitudinal project will be a large, ethnically diverse sample of children in the third and fourth grades at initial testing: children will be tested in each of three successive school years. This age period was chosen for study because it is during this period that individual differences in victimization by peers tend to stabilize. Each year measures will be collected of (a) children's representations of parent-child interaction, (b) cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions children experience during peer interactions that may mediate effects of the victim schema on victimization, and (c) victimization by peers. Primary data analyses will evaluate the proposed model. Other measures to be collected will allow evaluation of a broad range of additional questions about the causes and consequences of peer victimization (and aggression). Five years of support are requested. Data will be collected from two cohorts (Cohort 1 will be tested in Years 1, 2, and 3; Cohort 2 will be tested in Years 3, 4, and 5).