[MUSIC] So we're talking about the Rejected-Aggressive kids and why they seem to grow up to have so many difficulties with externalizing symptoms. Remember, it's not just being aggressive or just being rejected that seems to be important, it's the combination. There's been some research to suggest that there may be some good reason why. Remember that a lot of the kids who are rejected, about half of them are kids who are aggressive. And in fact, about a third of those kids who are aggressive are rejected. So this is a pretty big proportion of the kids who are rejected, they are coming with this aggressive disposition. Research has shown that there might be something about these rejected aggressive kids that makes their rejection more likely to be stable. So in other words results have demonstrated that of the kids who are aggressive and not rejected or not aggressive and rejected, they're very unlikely to be doing okay years later. So in other words, if you're rejected-aggressive, it's very likely that you're going to continue to be rejected and aggressive even years later. In this case, this is research showing those findings about two years later. It's possible that the aggressive form of rejection is the most stable form of peer rejection. So that's what people have been wondering is it the case that rejection in childhood predicts externalizing outcomes, because it's the most stable way of being rejected when you're aggressive as well. Is it the case that perhaps rejected-aggressive kids are more likely to be the recipients of bullying and victimization? There's some results to suggest that also may be true. It might be the case that these rejected-aggressive kids have worse social skills than the kids who are rejected withdrawn or rejected other. There's some research to suggest that's true, as well. In fact, interestingly, rejected aggressive kids are the worst at predicting how rejected they are. So in other words, there's been research to suggest that they've asked kids, who do you think likes you the most? Who do you think likes you the least? Do you think that you're popular or do you think that you're rejected? A lot of rejected kids know that they're rejected, but it turns out that that's mostly the rejected withdrawn kids. The kids who are rejected-aggressive have no idea that they're rejected in many cases. They actually think that they're very well-liked and that everyone likes them and really, enjoys the way they interact with others. As you can imagine, that doesn't help them very much in doing a lot better over time, but it also suggests that these kids have a really difficult time with social skills and understanding where they fit within the network. And that might be something that is particularly important for understanding why they go on to have such dire outcomes. But a final way that people have tried to understand, whether rejected-aggressive. Why rejected aggressive kids might go on to experience externalizing symptoms has to do with social cognitive processing. Now you might remember, a long time ago in one of the very first videos, we talked about the idea that there are ways in which we process social information. We attend to certain cues, we interpret social information, we setup social goals, develop, select and enact a social response. Following every single social stimulus that we experience and that process is referred to as social information processing, a social cognitive process. There's been some research to suggest that the rejected-aggressive kids are particularly, likely to have hostile attribution biases, which we talked about before. But a really, interesting study has demonstrated that that development of a hostile attribution bias might very closely follow the transactional model that we talked about before. So this is some work that was done by Jennifer Lansford and this was actually work that was published back in 2010 and what they found was that, kids who are experiencing aggressive behavior or more likely to be rejected. But what happens is that, because these kids are rejected. And I should mention, they collected data over many, many time points, many waves over many years. This is one of the best studies of the transactional model that's ever been done. These aggressive kids had rejection from peers, because of that peer rejection, they lost out on the opportunity to learn how to process information in an adaptive way. Peer rejection predicted increases in a hostile attribution bias, which predicted increases in peer rejection, which ultimately predicted further increases in hostile attribution bias, more rejection and so on. Really, beautifully demonstrating the cycle between behavior. Peer rejection, social cognitive processing and that sick cycle occurring over and over until ultimately, these kids had very severe difficulties with externalizing behavior. So some really nice evidence emerging to demonstrate that first of all, we definitely know that peer rejection seems to play a really important role for understanding why some kids develop externalizing symptoms. We know that rejected-aggressive kids in particular are at risk and it's more risky to be rejected aggressive than reject or aggressive alone. And we seem to be able to demonstrate that there's something about peer rejection, that takes aggressive kids and increases their risk for externalizing disorders, because it changes their opportunities to learn from their environment and creates a series of transactions that leads to a downward spiral of difficulties in interacting with others and understanding how to interpret social interaction and that is what we think today. Of course, there's more research being done on this topic now. But as of now, we believe that this is one of the reasons why peer rejection is such an incredibly powerful predictor of this type of outcome. Now next, we're going to talk about whether peer rejection also might be a predictor of internalizing outcomes. So stay tuned for that.
