Abstract:

Introduction:
Aggressive preschoolers are often rejected by their classmates and tend to associate with other aggressive peers. These negative social experiences, in turn, contribute to a further escalation of their aggressive behavior. One preventive strategy designed to interrupt this vicious cycle involves pairing an aggressive child with a socially competent classmate in a series of supervised play sessions.
This dyadic intervention pursues two main goals:
1. to teach alternative behaviors, such as social skills, and to provide opportunities to practice them, and
2. to foster the development of a positive relationship with the competent peer, which may, in turn, facilitate social integration within the classroom.
The goal of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of this intervention through a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).

Method:
A sample of 202 aggressive preschoolers (70% boys; Mage = 65 months) was recruited using a screening procedure based on parents’ and teachers’ ratings across 180 kindergarten classrooms. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control or intervention condition.
In the intervention condition, each target child was paired with a socially competent classmate for ten biweekly, 30-minute play sessions supervised by a therapist.
The sessions provided opportunities to:
(1) practice social skills and
(2) highlight and reinforce the target child’s strengths and positive behaviors in front of the peer.
Peer social status and aggression were assessed before and after the intervention for all participants using sociometric peer nominations conducted in the classroom.

Results:
Analyses revealed that aggressive children significantly improved their social status following the intervention. However, their levels of aggression remained unchanged, and no significant gains were observed in their social skills. Interestingly, the quality of the relationship established with the competent peer significantly predicted improvements in the target children’s social status within the classroom.

Conclusions:
This randomized controlled study demonstrated that the dyadic peer intervention significantly reduced aggressive children’s peer rejection but did not decrease their aggressive behavior. In other words, although their behavior did not change, they became less disliked by their classmates after participating in the intervention.
We believe that this dyadic peer approach could be improved in several ways. First, the intervention’s intensity was likely insufficient — ten sessions may not have been enough — and should be increased. Second, the selection of peers could be refined, for instance, by using sociometric data to guide pairing decisions.
Moreover, other forms of dyadic peer interventions for aggressive children should be explored. Instead of helping aggressive children form a new friendship with a socially competent peer, another promising approach is to intervene within their existing friendships. In a series of sessions targeting aggressive children and their best friends, Salvas and colleagues (2016) found that enhancing friendship quality contributed to reductions in aggression.

Keywords:

Preschool, aggression, social competence, intervention.