A new study has found that if an infant sweats less in response to a frightening situation when he is a year old; he is likely to be more aggressive when he is 3 years old.
The quantity an infant sweats at the age of 1 is directly linked to his or her aggressive behavior by the time he or she is 3 years of age. A new study shows that in scary situation, if a one year old infant sweats less, he or she is likely to more aggressive at the age of 3.
The lower level of sweat, measured by skin conductance activity (SCA), has been used to predict disorders and aggressive behavior in infants. Researchers found that aggressive toddles experience less amount of emotion in scary situations than their lesser aggressive friends.
They have a weaker fear response system and hence they resort to aggression to vent out their emotions. Psychological scientist Stephanie van Goozen of Cardiff University and colleagues conducted a study to see if this lower level of sweating could help predict aggressive behavior during infancy.
For the study, researchers attached recording electrodes to one-year-old infants' feet and measured their skin conductance at rest, in response to loud noises, and after encountering a scary remote-controlled robot. They also collected data on their aggressive behaviors at age 3, as rated by the infants' mothers. The findings showed that 1 year-old infants with lower SCA at rest and during the robot encounter were more physically and verbally aggressive at age 3.
"These findings show that it is possible to identify at-risk children long before problematic behavior is readily observable," van Goozen said. "Identifying precursors of disorder in the context of typical development can inform the implementation of effective prevention programs and ulti-mately reduce the psychological and economic costs of antisocial behavior to society."
The study was published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
