Anti-social children are commonly characterized as deficient in moral reasoning, unempathic, and unlikely to engage in prosocial acts (e.g., sharing, help, cooperation, negotiation). This study investigates individual differences in the organization of these social patterns in children at risk, to better understand dimensions that underlie the development of serious interpersonal aggression and rule violation. Patterns of emotion, behavior, and social-cognition in both hypothetical and real situations of interpersonal conflict and distress are examined in aggressive, disruptive, difficult-to manage preschool children. The first wave of assessment has been completed and data are being analyzed for approximately 80 children at low, moderate, or high ricks for later conduct problems. Children at risk already show limitations in their capacities for constructive coping. They express more aggressive and avoidant resolutions to problems and less compliance. Early gender differences are present in disruptive boys and girls. In social problem-solving situations involving interpersonal conflict, disruptive girls commonly express themes of anger that do not culminated in overt aggressive action. More often than boys, they express fear, sadness, and compensatory prosocial activity in ways suggestive of early differences in developmental trajectoriesv?9O??9Orning disabilities, and intelligence and disruptive behavior disorders have demonstrated modest, significant correlations but precise understanding of the nature of these relations remains to be determined. Advances in cognitive and neuroscientific fields provide new avenues of examining specific dimensions of cognitive function. Neuropsychological models of specific brain-behavior relations were used to assess verbal, visuospatial, and executive functioning and to predict preschoolers' nonverbal emotion perception accuracy and their behavioral control. Preschoolers who had mental retardation or pervasive developmental disorders were screened from the sample. Therefore, children's intelligence ranged from low average to superior intelligence. Preschoolers with lower intellectual functioning were more likely to be classified as behavior problems. This finding indicates that the link between cognitive and behavioral problems exists prior to entry into elementary school. Verbal ability predicted nonverbal emotion perception accuracy, and executive function skills predicted behavioral control in resistance to temptation situation. Verbal and executive function skills were significantly correlated. The differentiation of the two domains during this age period warrants additional research.
