Aggressive behavior problems place a burden on children, their relatives, and society. Their prognosis is poor, with increased risk for future antisocial behavior and high costs to society. Aggressive behavior is predicted by specific social information-processing patterns (SIP) and interventions targeting these patterns are relatively effective.

For many children, the actual SIP processes leading up to aggression only occur when they are highly aroused and engaged. Thus, understanding aggressive behavior requires individual assessment of SIP in realistic, engaging, aggression-provoking situations. Likewise, effective treatment requires careful tailoring to children’s individual SIP, and practice in the very situations that provoke a child’s aggressive behavior in real life. Understandably, research has struggled with the issues of capturing individual differences in SIP in actual provocative situations and tailoring intervention to individual SIP of aggressive youth.

The past decade, we have started to overcome these issues in concert by assessing and manipulating SIP in engaging social conflict situations, for example in a recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I adapted SIP theory to accommodate the effects of emotional engagement. We developed procedures to test SIP in staged peer conflicts, rigged online competitions, analyzed physiological processes and eye movements in SIP, and changed SIP using precisely targeted manipulations. This knowledge is currently applied and tested in widely implemented interventions.

Nonetheless, these advances are still but proxies to actual assessment of – and intervention with – individual children’s SIP as it unfolds in actual provocative social interactions. Aim of the present project is to assess and change SIP in actual social conflicts as they unfold. We will use interactive virtual reality exposure to aggression provoking social interactions to

1. assess individual SIP patterns of children with aggressive behavior problems in highly arousing virtual reality social interactions;
2. develop and test individually tailored cognitive behavioral treatment in interactive virtual reality environments.

The findings will provide a new framework to understand the differential development of aggressive behavior and will be directly implemented to prevent and treat behavior problems. The innovative assessment of processes implicated in aggression and their change through tailored manipulation may radically improve intervention.

• Period: August 2016 – December 2021
• Funding: This project was kindly funded with an NWO VICI to Bram Orobio de Castro, in cooperation with CleVR, Altrecht, GGZ Delfland, GGZ Noord-Nederland, Levvel, Opvoedpoli, RioZorg, and Youz. Researchers: Our team currently consists of Sophie Alsem (AIO), Rogier Verhoef (AIO), Anouk van Dijk (Ass Prof), Esmee Verhulp (Ass Prof), Janna v Keulen (Ass), Sander Thomaes (promotor), and Bram Orobio de Castro (PI), in cooperation with children, parents, and clinicians.

Society faces large and persistent levels of educational inequality. Around the world, children from poor and working-class backgrounds are far more likely to underperform in school than children from middle-class or affluent backgrounds. Why do they underperform? And how can we reduce these inequalities? During my fellowship, I will use my expertise in self-view development to study the pressing problem of inequality. My research shows that, from a young age, children form views of themselves and their abilities. What role do these self-views play in the emergence and maintenance of inequality? This research is a first step in exploring this idea. It will combine methods from different disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics, and educational science).