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Individuals differ in their sensitivity toward injustice. Justice-sensitive persons perceive injustice more frequently and show stronger responses to it. Justice sensitivity has been studied predominantly in adults; little is known about its development in childhood and adolescence and its connection to prosocial behavior and emotional and behavioral problems. This study evaluates a version of the justice sensitivity inventory for children and adolescents (JSI-CA5) in 1472 9- to 17-year olds. Items and scales showed good psychometric properties and correlations with prosocial behavior and conduct problems similar to findings in adults, supporting the reliability and validity of the scale. We found individual differences in justice sensitivity as a function of age and gender. Furthermore, justice sensitivity predicted emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents over a 1- to 2-year period. Justice sensitivity perspectives can therefore be considered as risk and/or protective factors for mental health in childhood and adolescence.
In this thesis, deficits in theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) were examined in tandem and separately as risk factors for conduct problems, including different forms and functions of aggressive behavior. All three reported studies and the additional analyses were based on a large community sample of N = 1,657 children, including three waves of a longitudinal study covering middle childhood and the transition to early adolescence (range 6 to 13 years) over a total of about three years. All data were analyzed with structural equation modeling.
Altogether, the results of all the conducted studies in this thesis extend previous research and confirm the propositions of the SIP model (Crick & Dodge, 1994) and of the amygdala theory of violent behavior (e.g., Blair et al., 2014) besides other accounts. Considering the three main research questions, the results of the thesis suggest first that deficits in ToM are a risk factor for relational and physical aggression from a mean age of 8 to 11 years under the control of stable between-person differences in aggression. In addition, earlier relationally aggressive behavior predicts later deficits in ToM in this age range, which confirms transactional relations between deficits in ToM and aggressive behavior in children (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Further, deficits in ToM seem to be a risk factor for parent-rated conduct problems cross-sectionally in an age range from 9 to 13 years. Second, deficits in cool EF are a risk factor for later physical, relational, and reactive aggression but not for proactive aggression over a course of three years from middle childhood to early adolescence. Habitual anger seems to mediate the relation between cool EF and physical, and as a trend also relational, aggression. Deficits in emotional and inhibitory control and planning have a direct effect on the individual level of conduct problems under the control of interindividual differences in conduct problems at a mean age of 8 years, but not on the trajectory of conduct problems over the course from age 8 to 11. Third, when deficits in cool EF and ToM are studied in tandem cross-sectionally at the transition from middle childhood to early adolescence, deficits in cool EF seem to play only an indirect role through deficits in ToM as a risk factor for conduct problems. Finally, all results hold equal for females and males in the conducted studies.
The results of this thesis emphasize the need to intervene in the transactional processes between deficits in ToM and in EF and conduct problems, including different forms and functions of aggression, particularly in the socially sensible period from middle and late childhood to early adolescence.