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Research: Why do preschoolers become aggressive?
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Not all children who display aggression have the same underlying causes. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have found that some preschoolers who display aggressive behavior have low verbal abilities, while others who display similar behavior are easily excitable.
The findings suggest that children with different underlying causes of similar behavior may require different treatment approaches.
" Aggressive reactions are natural behavior typical of early childhood, but adults expect changes in behavior and the ability to control their emotions from a child who starts attending kindergarten or school," says Dr. Lisa Gatzke-Kopp. "If a child cannot cope with this on their own, adults should pay attention to this and be sure to help them. Otherwise, ignoring signals indicating problems in the emotional sphere can result in serious problems in the future: skipping classes, violence against peers, drug addiction, and sometimes suicide."
Dr. Gatzke-Kopp, in collaboration with a team of colleagues, asked teachers from ten preschools at primary schools to rate the level of aggression in children on a six-point scale. Using the information they received, the specialists analyzed the behavioral responses of two groups of children. The group with a high level of aggression included 207 preschoolers, while a smaller number of children were included in the group with a low level of aggression – 132 people.
Both groups of experts underwent neurobiological analysis, the purpose of which was to identify the differences that underlie the behavior of aggressive and less aggressive children.
To do this, the scientists conducted tests with the children, during which they checked their academic and cognitive skills and identified the level of vocabulary, and also found out how developed the subjects' spatial reasoning and memory were.
Caregivers rated each child's level of defiance, sadness, social skills, and self-control.
Experts tried to understand how interconnected the emotional and physical reactions to different types of emotions are in aggressive and non-aggressive children.
According to the researchers, studying this problem has allowed us to understand how emotional and cognitive processing influences the development of aggression in children.
In particular, experts have found that 90% of aggressive children are characterized by low verbal abilities and mild physiological excitability.
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