Relationships between perceived teachers' controlling behaviour,psychological need thwarting,anger and bullying behaviour in high-school students

We tested a model of the associations between students' perceptions of their physical education teacher's controlling behaviour, perceptions of basic psychological need thwarting, anger and bullying behaviour. School students (N = 602; M age = 12.88, SD = 1.37) from 10 schools completed measures of perceived teachers' controlling behaviour and perceived thwarting of the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in physical education context and self-reported bullying and anger. A well-fitting structural equation model demonstrated that students' perceptions of the negative conditional regard and intimidation exhibited by the teacher had significant indirect effect on students' feelings of anger and bullying behaviour through the perceived psychological need thwarting in physical education. Findings suggest that physical education teachers who avoid the use of negative conditional regard and intimidation in their classes have students who perceive less need thwarting and report less bullying behaviour.     

Anxiety and aggression in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders attending mainstream schools

This study investigated the link between anxiety and aggression in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) using self-report measures of anxiety and anger and teacher ratings of behaviour. Participants were 104 high school students aged 12–18: 52 students with ASDs, without intellectual disability, and their typically developing peers matched for age and gender. Students with ASDs who attend mainstream high schools reported higher levels of anxiety and reactive anger than their peers, were reported by their teachers to engage in more aggressive behaviours, and were at higher risk of being suspended from school. The results further suggested that social anxiety is a significant moderator of the relationship between autism and physical aggression. For ASD students, but not for the control students, there was a strong, positive relationship: higher levels of anxiety were associated with higher levels of physical aggression. However, ASD students with high anger control did not display physical aggression. Our results have implications for screening students for anxiety, the provision of interventions for managing anxiety and the development of anger management skills, and for the appropriateness of suspension as a mandatory response to incidents of physical aggression in schools.     

Gender-specific symptoms of depression and anger attacks

Depression is a serious and potentially life-threatening mental illness, which does not only lead to personal suffering but also impairs social functioning and has a significant socioeconomic effect. Epidemiological studies have found a life-time prevalence of up to 17% in the general population and death due to suicides of up to 15%. As women have a two-fold higher prevalence for depressive disorder, it is noteworthy that suicide rates are consistently higher for men. Previous studies have suggested that mainly men suffer from a specific irritable depressive syndrome, which is characterized by lowered impulse control, symptomatic substance abuse, an increased readiness to take risks, and anger attacks, which present as sudden spells of inappropriate anger with vegetative hyperarousal. This article reviews gender-specific aspects of depressive disorder focussing on anger attacks and their clinical management.     

Cortisol moderates the relationship between testosterone and aggression in delinquent male adolescents.

BACKGROUND: In animals, strong evidence exists for an association between testosterone and aggression. In humans, and particularly in children and adolescents, findings have been less consistent. Previous research has suggested that this may partly be due to moderating effects of other factors, e.g., hormones. This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of cortisol on the relationship between testosterone and subtypes of aggression in delinquent male adolescents. METHODS: Participants were 103 boys (mean age 13.7) referred to a delinquency diversion program. Testosterone and cortisol levels were determined from saliva samples collected during resting conditions and related to self-report scores on overt and covert aggression. RESULTS: Linear regression analyses revealed a significant interaction between cortisol and testosterone in relation to overt aggression, with a significant positive relationship between testosterone and overt aggression in subjects with low cortisol levels but not in subjects with high cortisol levels. Using the same model for covert aggression, no significant effects of testosterone, cortisol, or testosterone x cortisol interaction were found. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate a moderating effect of cortisol on the relationship between testosterone and overt aggression in delinquent male adolescents. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Differences between conduct disordered and normal control children in their tendencies to escalate or neutralize conflicts when interacting with normal peers

The behavior of conduct disordered (CD) children was compared with normal control (NC) children in interaction with normal peers. Dyads consisting of a) a CD child and a normal peer and b) an NC child and the same normal peer as in a) were observed. CD boys were less able than NC boys to neutralize incipient conflicts. Hitherto most behavioral studies of CD boys have concentrated on their tendency to escalate conflicts but have paid very little attention to their difficulty in neutralizing conflicts.     

Individual Differences in Plasma Catecholamine and Corticosterone Stress Responses of Wild-Type Rats: Relationship With Aggression

Plasma noradrenaline (NA), adrenaline (A), and corticosterone (CS) responses to social and nonsocial stressors were studied in male members of a strain of wild-type rats, widely differing in their level of aggression. The aggressiveness was preliminarily established by measuring the latency time to attack (ALT) a male intruder in a standard resident-intruder test. Animals were then provided with a jugular vein cannula for blood sampling during stress exposure. Implanted rats were randomly assigned to 3 experimental treatments: social stress (defeat experience, SD), nonsocial stress (presentation of a shock-prod, SP) and control (animals undisturbed in their home cages, CTR). A significant correlation was found between ALT and the amount of time spent in burying the probe in SP rats: the more aggressive the animal, the higher the rate of burying behavior. SD induced a much stronger effect on plasma NA, A, and CS concentrations than SP. A significant negative correlation was found between ALT scores and values of the area under the response time curve for NA and A, in both SD and SP situations: the more aggressive the animal, the higher the catecholaminergic reactivity to the stressors. On the contrary, no evidence of a correlation between aggressiveness and plasma corticosterone responses was found, neither in SD nor in SP rats. These findings in an unselected strain of wild-type rats confirmed that an aggressive/active coping strategy is associated with a high sympathetic-adrenomedullary activation and support the concept of individual differentiation in coping styles as a coherent set of behavioral and neuroendocrine characteristics.     

Intermale aggression and infanticide in aged C57BL/6J male mice: Behavioral deficits are not related to serum testosterone (T) levels and are not recovered by supplemental T

Healthy aged adul (24–26 months of age) and young adult (2–4 months of age) C57BL/6J male mice were assessed for intermale aggression, pup-killing behavior (infanticide), and circulating levels of testosterone (T). When compared to young adult male mice, aged adult males were highly variable in the exhibition of both androgen-dependent behaviors. Significant numbers of aged males exhibited deficits in aggression and pup-killing while other animals were as behaviorally active as their young male counterparts. Assessment of serum T showed that aging did not produce a reduction in levels of the steroid and individual variability in androgen-dependent behavior of aged males was not related to plasma levels of the hormone. When aged non-aggressive and non-killer males were exposed to supplemental T by way of subcutaneously implanted silastic capsules, circulating levels of the steroid were elevated but T-dependent behavior was not recovered. These findings, in combination with those previously reported for copulatory behavior, indicate that the deficits observed in the androgen-dependent behavior of aged male mice cannot be attributed to a breakdown in the production of testicular androgens. While neural refractoriness to T may account in part for deficits in androgen-dependent behavior of aged males, the variability that is observed in the reproductive behaviors of aged male rodents ultimately may be related to other sources of variation such as perinatal environment.     

Brain serotonin depletion by p-chlorophenylalanine or lesions of raphe neurons in rats

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with p-chlorophenylalanine (pCPA) and 15–24 hr later their behavior was rated in an observation chamber. Their behavior was compared with rats which had lesions in the dorsal and median raphe nuclei to deplete brain serotonin. In spite of a comparable lowering of brain serotonin, lesioned rats did not display exaggerated sexual or aggressive behavior.     

Maintained aggressive behavior in gonadectomized male Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens)

Adult male Betta splendens were gonadectomized and tested twice for aggressive behavior two weeks later. In a mutual viewing test environment, it was found that gonadectomized animals maintained their aggressive behavior on all six indices of aggression at a level equal to controls. Animals that showed some testis regeneration and sham operated fish were also equal to controls. The results are interpreted to mean that adult aggressive behavior in male B. splendens may not be under the control of gonadal hormones. Pituitary gonadotropins, interrenal gland, and critical period hypotheses are given as possible explanations of the maintained aggressiveness following castration.