Social Cognitive Intervention: Reducing Irritability and Impulsivity among Aggressive Adolescents

The study examines the effectiveness of Social Cognitive Intervention in reducing Irritability and Impulsivity among Aggressive Adolescents. The intervention was conceptualized using a Social Information Processing framework for understanding the development of aggressive behaviour. Social information processing theory emphasizes the active role of cognition in social adjustment. A five session Social-Cognitive Intervention was designed to train aggressive individuals not to infer hostile peer intent, to act non-impulsively and not to be irritated in negative social encounters and to provide various appropriate responses to such situations. By focusing on restructuring cognitions and changing social information processing pattern, it is assumed that changes in feelings of anger, irritability & impulsivity would then follow which would further reduce aggression among individuals. 100 aggressive individuals were randomly assigned to experimental and control group. After 5 sessions of social cognitive intervention, all the aggressive individuals, from both experimental and control groups were administered Irritability and Impulsivity Questionnaires to assess the effectiveness of intervention. Experimental and control group were compared on both variables by applying a series of univariate ANOVAs. Same statistics were also applied to compare experimental and control group for males and females separately. Individuals in experimental group showed significant less Irritability and Impulsivity scores as compared to those in control group, thereby proving the effectiveness of social cognitive intervention. Implications for research and practice involving the treatment of aggressive adolescents are discussed.